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Two Open Document Standards Better Than One?
tsa writes "Microsoft says that the consumers should have the choice between multiple open standards for documents." From the article: "Microsoft's Yates said that OpenDocument and Open XML come from very different design points. 'In the future at some point there will be convergence,' he said. In the near term, the transition period from proprietary document formats to Open XML-based ones will be 'messy and complex,' he added. 'Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing.'"
If you are Microsoft, what you have at stake are billions of dollars and your monopoly. Therefore Microsoft will do absolutely anything to protect both. They are a monopoly and this is what monopolies do.
I guess all the rest of us can do is plot our course - in this case OpenDocument - and stick to it through thick and thin.
Microsoft will contine to wriggle and bluster around this for months and months. It's part of the game. There's no point wasting any more energy on the subject. Microsoft would like nothing more than to exhaust people they will always regard as competition.
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They've promised to create exactly that perpetual license, and there's pretty much no question at this point that they will indeed do so. The problem is this: Their proposed format sucks, and ECMA probably won't do anything about it.
Compared to ODF, the format Microsoft is proposing is vastly less suitable for XMLT transforms. It fails to leverage preexisting standards, so other implementations can't take advantage of existing code to render and manipulate SVG, MathML and the like.
Please see the OpenDocument Fellowship's introduction to the technical merits of Microsoft's proposed format to better understand the extralegal objections to the same.
One was giving short insight into ODF v. M$' DOCX. (*)
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ODF is flow based a-la HTML.
DOCX is record based a-la files generated by Write (.wri) & WinWord' text changes stream.
Application of styles is very different. Even if conversion of text can be made, conversion of styles is almost impossible. In DOCX styles are more or less inlined - ODF was redesigned by OASIS with styles to be more like HTML+CSS.
Basicly, M$'s concept boils down to "anything can occur anywhere in document". ODF hence standard is more strict.
Additionally M$ has special support for ActiveX: embedded objects will be stored as binary dump in middle of XML documents. (E.g. all pictures and files inserted from outside in M$ universe are ActiveX objects.) I'm not sure who ODF pares with embedded content, I can only hope OASIS - unlike M$ - have put XML to good use. After all, unlike M$, ODF includes vector and raster graphics too.
(*) http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051125
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
find it interesting that you are so meticulous about interpreting Microsoft's license, yet you seem to ignore entirely Sun's license and patent covenent which contains very similar "loopholes". For instance, Sun's patent covenent promises not to sue anyone *SO LONG A SUN IS PARTICIPATING* in that version of OpenDocument.
First, MS has applied for and been granted patents on the format itself in multiple jurisdictions. Sun has not patented the Open Office format. The license you are referring to discusses technologies that may be utilized by the format, not the format itself. Second, Sun has promised not to sue anyone for using any of their patents that might cover technology in the Open Office spec, because that is what OASIS requires. It does not imply that any such technologies exist. Third, regarding the participation clause, no company in their right mind would cede all their patent rights for all technology arbitrarily. The participation clause allows Sun to decline the option to participate in a new version of the standard, thus preventing someone from arbitrarily inserting random patented technology in a new version of the spec, and thus gaining access to any of Suns patents, license free.
There is a big difference between an agreement that says if any patents conflict with a format they won't be enforced and a patented format, licensed with restrictions. There is a huge difference between the ability to not release a new version of a format from patent protection and the ability to arbitrarily rescind a license to a format. If Sun decided not to participate in a future version of Open Office any company that has implemented old versions are still free to do so and new programs are free to implement them for backwards compatibility. If MS releases a new version of the "Open XML" spec no one is free to keep distributing old word processors or implement new word processors that can use that format for backwards compatibility, save at MS's whim. If you don't see the practical difference then you're either dense or being paid not to see it.
So, for example, if Sun decided they didn't like the direction of OpenDocument 1.1, they could stop participating and then sue anyone for "suddenly discovered" patents.
Sun can only sue if they have patents covered by a new version of the spec that they are not implementing (none are known) and if other companies then go ahead and implement that spec. The reason for this restriction on their patent protection license was already explained above.
Additionally, the "openness" of something has nothing to do with whether or not it's GPL compatible. There are many open source (and even Free, according the Free Software Foundation) licenses that are not GPL compatible. The Mozilla Public License, for instance.
You're confusing "open" and "open source." Open source means you can view the code. Open means the format is unencumbered and freely implementable by all. An open standard is one that can be implemented by anyone. A closed standard is one that must be licensed and is subject to restrictions. The Open Document standard is open. No license is needed to implement it, and the various companies that submitted the standard have pledged that if any of their patents cover items within it, they won't enforce them (to prevent submarine patenting). MS, on the other hand, admits to having patented the "Open XML" spec, and further has placed restriction on how that spec can be used (singling out certain software licenses for specific exclusion).
I'm also skeptical that Sun's license is GPL compatible either, since they impose the additional requirement of granting Sun reciprocal patent rights (explictly Sun, not necessarily others), which violates the "no additional restrictions" clause of the GPL.
A document format cannot be (by definition) GPL compatible. The GPL covers source code and redistribution of binaries. That is copyright law, not patent law. Nothing prevents GPL programs from implemen