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Patent Threats In OOXML
An anonymous reader notes an initiative by the New Zealand Open Source Society to weigh in on the question of standardizing Microsoft's OOXML. The organization has authored a white paper (available in several formats, HTML here) laying out the ways in which the OOXML spec falls short of what a standard should be. From the article: "'If OOXML goes through as an ISO standard, the IT industry, government and business will [be] encumbered with a 6,000-page specification peppered with potential patent liabilities' said New Zealand OSS President Don Christie. 'Alarm bells are going off in many parts of the world over OOXML. Normally ISO draft standards would be drawn up by a number of stakeholder organizations, involving an often slow process of consensus building and knowledge sharing. Since many aspects of the office document format remain proprietary, OOXML has not taken this development track.'"
In my opinion, the right solution to these patent problems is eliminating software and/or business process patents.
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There can only be one standard. One will survive and be commonly implemented , and the other won't become widespead and will only be used by fringe elements.
/. stories) that the OOXML architecture seems rather shoddy and looks like something that was quickly put together. MSFT is trying to force it through iso rather thanb let OOXML succeed through its own merit... that alone draws suspicion to the quality of OOXML.
ODF has been gaining ground in the EU and in other parts of the world, whereas OOXML has to start from a dead stop. It's only asset is the marketing power of MSFT behind it, but that may not be enough. It is already clear (from other
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
ISO makes money by creating standards - the more standards they create; the more money goes into ISO.
But why there are so many there that wants to create an bad standard ?
Dont ask me that.
Just saying it like it are.
yeah, but what's "reasonable" for a business may not (and in fact, will probably not) be reasonable for individuals, and I think GP's post is that in the age of the internet and open source, that ought to be a very serious consideration for standards bodies, an opinion I'd completely agree with.
free software may not be "free as in I'm sleeping on your couch", but it certainly is "free as in you're free to use, modify and redistribute it without needing an army of lawyers and negotiating thousands of different licensing agreements", a position to which neither the MPEG standard nor OOXML is helping in any way.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
I disagree with a couple of the things you've said:
but I don't think it is unreasonable for people to want compensation for their work
The fact that a person wants compensation for work does not make it reasonable for that person to receive it. I may want compensation for writing a novel that no one wants to read. Tough luck. I may want compensation for parenting. Again, tough luck. Having some rights to the fruits of one's labour is different from demanding fruits from that labour. I'm sure you would agree that this scenario (expecting to be paid regardless of the costs to society) is just as problematic as that in which all software is free as in beer. Patents and copyright impose costs on society, and so those costs have to be balanced against the benefit of patent and copyright policy. The benefits must outweigh the costs or the policy must be attenuated. Like you, I'm trying to point out that this issue is not black and white or cut and dried.
It's not cheap or easy to develop new compression technology, I work at a university that does JPEG 2000 research and there's a lot of time and money spent on it. That's got to come from somewhere, and the people that put it up want a return.
Many universities (I would guess most, but I don't have the statistics handy) are funded largely by taxpayers. There's a good reason for that: You can't journey into the unknown on a budget and with a rigid five-year plan. Private industry would be almost entirely economically incapable of advancing human knowledge. If you do research work inside a university, the work has already been compensated. Wanting a cut of the royalties is more than just wanting "compensation for work".
Universities have begun playing the patent game because they are chronically underfunded and they need money desperately. As universities are starved for research money, patents and copyright play a greater role in generating creative output than they used to. In other words, less money for universities means more reliance on patents and copyright as the key policy instruments for advancing human knowledge. I think that is a very unfortunate trend.
I also think that patents in communication and file format standards are very different from other kinds of patents. Patents in communication standards prevent me from participating in culture without a private firm's permission. A communication standard (such as a file format standard) is no different than a language. I shouldn't have to pay a private company to participate in human language. Not only would that be a huge pain in the ass for everyone, it would make it even more difficult for dissenting opinions to be heard than it already is. Would you like to pay a fee to some private company for the right to speak English? Or pay based on the number of people who read your writing? That would be counter-productive from the perspective of encouraging the advancement of human society, which is the reason patents exist in the first place.
This leads, I think, to a homogenization of public discourse and a gradual concentration of power in the hands of fewer voices. That can't be a good thing for a developing a healthy, engaged populace.
MPEG-4 would be an excellent example. It is an open standard, but has a whole lot of patents covering it.
That's an example of a scandal, not good practice. You can only believe that it's good practice if you believe in software and business method patents. Both of those things have been discredited as a corruption of the patent process and both are stiflingly anti-competitive. RAND is an obfuscation that reasonable standards bodies reject.
OOXML would be an even bigger scandal because it does not even pass your ludicrously low qualifications.
1) The format is open and not subject to change/closure at the whim of a company (generally controlled by a standards body).
OOXML is neither open nor complete because it contains insane specifications that basically say, "do this exactly like Word for Mac with a HP Laser Jet printer did" without further instructions.
The whole point of OOXML is for M$ to have a "standard" they control. If they wanted an open and reasonable standard, they would be using ODF.
All patent holders have agreed that the format can use their parents and that the only compensation they'll get is from those fees.
M$ always presses their advantage. You may wish they did not, but company history proves otherwise, and people who partner with or trust M$ are always crushed.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Basically they are saying that although the Gregorian calendar says 1900 is NOT a leap year, from now on it should be, otherwise a certain program's spreadsheet data wouldn't be correct anymore because one programmer screwed up getting the dates right in said legacy program, many years ago.
Never mind that the world didn't start in 1900 (dates before either 1900 or 1904 are NOT IMPLEMENTED)
Never mind bothering to implement other calendars (Islamic, Chinese etc.) which might be of interest in large parts of the world.
WHY didn't they just use ISO 8601, like ODF did?
Speaking of ODF, this is what they put in par. 14.7.11 (p. 523) if you don't believe me:
So basically, my gripe with OOXML is not that it's legally unclear, or not open enough, it's that it's clearly not written to be A STANDARD. Think with me pls:
If the OASIS people overlooked an important calendar/date problem, and there is consensus, it can be added in the next version of the standard. All existing ODF documents are safe.
vs.
If the ECMA/Microsoft people decide one day to correct this bogus "1900 should from now on be a leap year" feature, all OOXML text documents that contain dates will have to be checked, and the ones that turn out to have dates from 1900 have to be corrected.
See the difference?
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
> Clearly the ISO bodies are being corrupted (packed) by MS
s ), so the
/my/ preparations at:
...).
> and I really don't understand why.
Actually, as a serving member of sc71l (the technical subcommittee
tasked with providing a recommendation to our ISO representative to
vote on behalf of the country)in South Africa, I object to this blatant
painting of all the committee members with the same brush.
Some of us have worked immensely hard to ensure that the OOXML
'spec' is never a 'standard'. We spent a great deal of time preparing
arguments, presentations and getting people from IBM, SUN and our
local FLOSS businesses to present as well.
We voted against OOXML as a standard 13-2-2 (broken down as
"NoWithComments-YesWithComments-YesWithoutComment
real vote was more realistically 15-2 against!
You can read one of
http://www.meraka.csir.co.za/~lmanickum/stansa/
Trust me, we worked very hard, and some of us are
still working on this (cleaning up the comments that
go with a "no" vote, etc
goose
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.