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MS Reveals Info On New RSS Extensions
dizzy_p writes "Microsoft released yesterday more information on their earlier announced extensions to the RSS format(s). The specifications can be found on MSDN. The question is, will the mainstream developer adopt these specifications, or will they only live in the Microsoft "Blogosphere" (To quote MSDN). The specifications in question are named Microsoft Simple Sharing Extensions Specification and Microsoft Simple List Extensions Specification"
RTFA. Specially at the end. The text of the specification is under a Creative Commons license. Also, MS explicitly states that they have no intention of burdening implementations of the standard with patents.
FTFA: Microsoft's copyrights in this specification are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
This license is more simple, but the same in principle, to the GPL.
It's called the "embrace, extend, extinguish" attitude, Microsoft's standard operating procedure since day 1. No less annoying nowadays, but certainly not surprising. I doubt it will work with RSS, though, since RSS is already in wide use outside the "MS blogosphere", and popular tools like Google Desktop Search and most FOSS RSS aggregators won't incorporate MS's extensions.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
You really don't understand the 'embrace/extend/extinguish' cycle, do you?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Yup, Embrace, Extend, sue anyone who disagrees. We love you M$, for all the bullshit and over priced bugware
No where do the links call this a "standard". RSS is a standard. These are add-ons (extensions) to the RSS standard. Now, I have no love for Microsoft, but I'd say we should give them a little credit for releasing their own extensions and licensing them under a Creative Commons License that essentially lets anyone impelment these extensions.
Granted that MS is also mentioned in some of such efforts, but still I think there is a place for Cisco to be offended from such a comparison as you used.
Although royalty can mean "payment to the holder of a patent or copyright or resource for the right to use their property"[2], which would prevent Microsoft from charging for patent licenses applicable to their RSS Extensions, it more commonly means "a share of the profit or product reserved by the grantor"[3] or "compensation that is paid to the owner of an asset based on income earned by the asset's user"[4], which essentially limits Microsoft to a flat-fee license. Royalty free doesn't mean that they necissarily will charge for licenses but it seems to mean that they could.
Although they say the terms will be "reasonable and non-discriminatory", I don't know what that means. I would hope it means that they don't discriminate against Free software, commercial software, competitors, people without money to pay for a license, etc. but it's very vague--perhaps there's a legal meaning or it's just there to sound nice.
I think the patent trap idea is a bit out there--I don't think it's going to happen--but it doesn't seem that Microsoft is guaranteeing that it won't happen.
Sources
[1]http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/rss/sse/
Copyright © 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
[2] WordNet ® 2.0
Copyright © 2003 Princeton University
[3] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
[4] Wall Street Words: An A to Z Guide to Investment Terms for Today's Investor by David L. Scott.
Copyright © 2003 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.