Office 2007 UI License

MikeWeller writes, "Microsoft has recently announced a new licensing program for the Office 2007 user interface. This page links to the license and an MSDN Channel9 interview about the program (featuring a lawyer). The program 'allows virtually anyone to obtain a royalty-free license to use the new Office UI in a software product. There's only one limitation: if you are building a program which directly competes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or Access (the Microsoft applications with the new UI), you can't obtain the royalty-free license.' What does this mean for OpenOffice? Will traditional menus/toolbars hold up to an ever-increasing number of features, or will OO be forced to take on a new UI paradigm? With the gap between OO and MS Office widening, how is this going to affect users trying to move between the two platforms?" You need to sign the license before you can get the 120-page UI implementation guidelines, which are confidential.

Comments

I think the courts have made it pretty clear

[Colin Smith]

You can copy any UI that you want to.

This is just a clear threat to competitors that they're going to be spending millions defending frivolous law suits. Interesting that Microsoft have decided that their business model is now to sue competitors.

Re:I think the courts have made it pretty clear

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I agree, this is a fucking joke. MS are not giving away an implementation of the UI. Just the "right" to copy it. Well ffs Microsoft, you copied the entire Windows UI from Xerox. As the OP says, anyone can copy your UI. In fact there's a ribbon bar in at least one commercial UI Windows toolbox I know of - what are MS trying to say to that company?

Basically what this says is, IF you download the document, you CAN'T implement the UI unless MS sign off on your implementation. But if you ignore this propagandist nonsense, you can implement any UI you like including a poorly implemented version of the Ribbon UI.

Jeez. Wake me up when it's in the Win32 API.