Slashdot Mirror
New York Jumps Into Open Formats Fray
cyrusmack writes "Hot on the heels of the bad news regarding the defeat of all open formats bills, New York has become the latest in an area that has seen a flurry of activity already this year. In the article on InfoWorld, it's pretty clear that this bill is significantly watered down from what other states have attempted to do this year. You can bet Microsoft will be there in force, just as it has been elsewhere."
The differences between Microsoft's proposed open standard OpenXML and IBM/Sun's ODF standard in terms of functionality they're virtually interchangable. It's the licensing of these standards that's the issue. Now you're all going to jump in and say that OpenXML is tainted because it is under a license written by Microsoft. You should also consider that ODF's license is written by SUN. The following analysis of OpenXML and makes comparisons of the licensing of OpenXML to ODF.
8 -4E0D-B290-C836D5F70867/0/OpenXML.pdf
...states:
http://www.bakernet.com/NR/rdonlyres/CC54A6B6-79E
Microsoft's CNS is similar to a covenant issued by Sun Microsystems Inc., in September 2005, in respect of any patents that it holds in respect of the Open Document Format ('ODF') for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Specification ('Sun's Covenant')15.
There are three qualifications detailed in the Microsoft CNS, which are also present in Sun's Covenant and reflect standard industry practice.The first is designed to protect Microsoft from the actions of others. It states that the covenant will not apply where a person asserts or threatens to assert rights against Microsoft.The second qualification concerns the scope of Microsoft patents: it is designed to put users on notice that a conforming implementation of the Schema may not include a patent claimed by Microsoft or, if the conforming implementation does include such a patent, that the patent may not be enforceable.The third qualification addresses the intellectual property rights of others that any conforming implementation of the Schema may contain. Microsoft is not in a position to protect users from any such third party infringement.The second and third qualifications are designed to protect Microsoft from any liability arising from the implementation of the Schema. As such, neither impact on the 'safe harbour' users are given under the CNS from any Microsoft enforcement action.
So basically it seems that the licensing issues surrounding ODF and OpenXML are pretty much equivalent. There are strings attached to both the ODF and OpenXML formats and those strings are basically there to stop third parties from being able to legally attack Microsoft or Sun.
As I see it this story is really about whether legislation is going to be passed that is prejudiced against Microsoft and formats they have created.
Why should ODF reguire legislation to be passed in order for it to be successful?
Would you know an open document format if it bit you on the butt?
Can you explain how the licensing of ODF better than Microsoft's OpenXML?
The first link google, yahoo and live bring up...
/ 2007/05/odf_vs_openxml.html
f _vs_oxml
http://weblog.infoworld.com/realitycheck/archives
Not so favourable to your argument. It basically says exactly the same thing I did, this is a battle between Microsoft and a bunch of companies competing against Microsoft for market dominance.
The second link on google...
http://opendocumentfellowship.org/introduction/od
Is of course more favourable to your argument. Yet it seems the best they can come up with is that OpenXML isn't well supported yet.
I looked at the first two links from the search engine results linked to in the original post. I'm not ignoring anything. When/If OpenXML is accepted as an ISO then I think this argument will be settled and you will have to accept ODF and OpenXML are equivalent. I think you will have to accept it one day, it's pretty clear that Microsoft accepts that people want their information in easy to work with document formats, that are freely licensed and developed against.
You say stuff, but nothing on how it's either closed or proprietary. I get it, you don't like OOXML, but that doesn't make it closed or proprietary.
Wrong. You can create a .docx document with an open source text editor and a zip program. The first time I did this upon taking a look at the format took seconds after reviewing the documentation available. I am not a programmer; I have not reverse engineered anything.
This is completely impossible with the .doc format. They are not exactly the same; they are fundamentally very different.
There are all sorts of things about a format that allows for proprietary binary inclusions that will create problems. However, given your own disinformation and paranoid hysteria, I can't see people like you having too much influence on whatever happens.