Slashdot Mirror
Legal Counsel Advises Against Accepting OOXML Pledge
ozmanjusri writes "A legal analysis of Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (OSP), which was purportedly written to give developers protection from patent risk, says the promise should not be trusted. According to the Software Freedom Law Center, 'While technically an irrevocable promise, in practice the OSP is good only for today.' This is on the back of a chaotic ISO meeting to resolve outstanding specification problems. The session was described by Tim Bray as 'Complete, utter, unadulterated bulls**t. This was horrible, egregious, process abuse and ISO should hang their heads in shame for allowing it to happen.' The advice would seem to throw more doubt on OOXML's suitability as an international document standard. Microsoft responded to these assertions stating that they've already taken steps to answer these concerns"
I suggest you all read this post by Gray Knowlton, the group product manager for MS Office, where he clarifies some of the more incendiary statements by the SFLC.
He make some pretty reasonable arguments, and calls the blatant bias against MS, when IBM and sun get a free pass even though their own version of the OSP has the same restrictions as MS. Very interesting to see the kettle lashing back at pot.
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
Right. Some free software lawyers came to a consensus on its legal meaning, happening to agree that a group they (perhaps correctly) see as the enemy isn't doing enough for them.
In other news, a dozen Catholic bishops came to a consensus that Catholicism is the one true faith and that promises made by other religions might not be as good.