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Unix Group Takes UK Standards Body To Court Over OOXML
superglaze writes "Halfway through the two-month window of opportunity during which OOXML's ISO standardization can be derailed by a formal objection from a national standards body, the UK Unix Users Group is trying to force the British Standards Institution to do just that. According to the Unix Users Group, the BSI used a flawed decision-making process when they chose to approve OOXML in the ISO vote. 'The UKUUG is also folding in many other complaints about Office Open XML (OOXML), such as unresolved patent issues and a lack of completion in the specification's documentation, and is calling for the High Court of Justice to force a judicial review of the BSI's decision.' This is not the first time a country's ISO vote has been challenged."
Props UK, boo others.
2. So far, it seems like Microsoft has only been getting slaps on the wrist. Nothing has yet threated to actually end their monopoly.
3. There are plenty of people who still love Microsoft and practically worship Bill Gates, and a much larger percentage of people (everyone else) who could care less.
OOXML is such a foul, repugnant anti-standard, and it will be pushed so hard, that if it's accepted it will severely damage the whole idea of interoperability standards.
ODF implementations have been written for countless office apps. Getting that out is not mutually exclusive with fighting OOXML.
Not really give a shit about OOXML? I mean just reading the wikipedia page makes me sleepy. Countries are actually arguing over this? This has to be last on my list of things that need sorted out.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
We can do both.
It's called teamwork. While one group is building the tools you mention, others are putting themselves in the path of an 800 lb. gorilla. It's not just the heroes who save the day, but all of the little people in red shirts that buy them time.
Before I am called a shill or anything else, read what I have said, I want to know... Without regard to fanatics - don't bother responding - what has Microsoft done wrong with this? What has the ISO body done wrong? I see that people are unhappy, I see that people think that this is bad, and yet not one person has been able to put their reasons why in to logical reasons that I can comprehend. It always turns into a religious view and not one where there's any technical merit or reasons that hold up as to why they couldn't have ratified the standard. I just want to know WHY damn it... One, just one, shard of evidence (not belief) will be just fine. The way I figure it, well, it could just be ignored as we ignore the HTML 3.0 standards now if we wanted. You got a wallet, haven't you?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
> The best thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
You're damn right. But OOXML is not a standard. A standard has to be documented properly and (which is more important) completely. OOXML satisfies neither of these conditions. So it's not a standard.
> Standing around crying because Microsoft bought a standard...
I'm tired of people like you. Look buddy, we're crying not because "Microsoft bought a standard". We're crying because a half-baked specification got recognized as a standard. We're crying because, in the near future, people will distribute documents in a format that is "according to ISO xxxx-yyyy" but in reality incompletely defined.
And it's not mutually exclusive with fighting OOXML. So you shoot yourself in the foot by appearing to want to go technologically backwards and like whiny bitches at the same time. Wow, nice spin-doctoring.
The alternative is to say nothing, which would be seen as tacit acceptance -- and then we would actually be forced to implement this "standard". So we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't. At least this way, there's a chance we'll get the decision reversed.
Because I care a lot more about actually working with ODF (and not working with ODF) then looking good by cooperating with OOXML in any way. Save the energy you want to spend on protests and lawsuits and direct it towards building a better product. See, the problem is, we tried that, and it didn't work.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
And do you think Microsoft can't convince some country's group to object if theirs gets booted and the other one gets chosen?
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
I thought the advantage of standards was to reduce divergence in systems. The more implementations of particular items, such as screws, conform to a standard, such as phillips head, the better it is for the people who use screws.
Energy has/is being focused on implementations of another standard and there are already good implementations of the formats you mention from numerous sources including Microsoft.
The problem with OOXML is that it cannot be implemented by anyone other than a single vendor because the format as defined contains references to specific behavior without actually specifying said behavior.
Where a vote has been passed on an obviously incomplete specification and through such blatant corruption, it should be challenged. This is the duty of anyone who values freedom and democracy - and for people intelligent enough to appreciate the importance of the the rule of law. The fact that the format was pushed through by Microsoft in particular is irrelevant to this point.
The UKUUG taking legal action over the corruption in the vote doesn't make them look like whiners. It makes them look like learned elders who are about to take a stick to a bunch of delinquents. And all power to them.
Protest against the standardization of OOXML doesn't appear technologically backwards when conducted in an appropriate forum and it portrays OOXML as the backwards step it truly is.
As the web makes it possible for more devices from more vendors to inter-operate seamlessly, along comes a format which is only really implementable by one vendor. If someone was to try this with heads or threads, they'd be totally screwed. Microsoft needed to pay to have this pass and by highlighting that at every step of the way, the more money they pour into this, the more corrupt they appear and the more they blacken their own name.
Oh nonononono. Silly little monkey.
This is not about a product. This is about a format to be implemented by anyone who can read a specification
A reasonable open standard already exists.
Using the judiciary to defeat corruption wherever it exists is entirely correct. That is one of the reasons for it's existence.
Toss pot
I don't therefore I'm not.
what you call whining other might call doing there job to protect there company or clients.
The reason you see it as whining is because your on microsofts side so it appears to you as whining where as on our side its fighting the good fight.
The key problem here is that you should have to fight to have your standard approved. If you can not defend your standard. If you can not close the holes in your documentation to shoot down all the challenges then you dont deserve to have it pass standardization.
Also you say its a step backward however we move technology forward by challenging existing and upcoming technology.
I've got some karma to burn, so here's something blatantly off-topic. Where are the mods? I've hardly seen any comments above a 2 for the last several stories. Is nobody moderating anymore? Do I have my preferences set wrong? Feel free to reply as AC so you don't lose karma answering me. I'm just curious here.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
Standards are important.
My car is made by $COMPANY1.
I can buy tires for it made by $COMPANY2.
I can put them on wheels made by $COMPANY3.
I can tighten the weelnuts with a wrench from $COMPANY4.
You get the idea?
I'm sure that $COMPANY1 would just love to sell me everything to do with my car from the tires on up, but they can't because it's all STANDARD.
STANDARDS are good for consumers, Monopolies are not.
While the good guys are building code and doing what you say, the elephant in the room is that MS is bribing politicians, pulling little tricks like having Bumphackistan join the ISO just to flog their abortion of a standard, saying publically they won't adhere to their own standard (which in fact they don't) and in general pulling every dirty trick in the book. A few people have the sheer unmitigated gall to turn the lights on these cockroaches and you call it whinging?
Um, no just building a superior product isn't going to cut it when your opponents will basically lie and cheat to get their way.
Forgot to type 'jobs' for the first sentence. It should be:
Because those of us that have jobs and are sent Word documents in email give a shit.
Forgive the reply to self...
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
I ask the following question not as a troll, but as someone curious about this whole thing. I've heard this statement several times, and I was wondering if you could point out a concrete example of it. (I'd like to have such an example to point out to those who ask the same question as a troll =) )
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I can think of at least two office suites (possibly three) off the top of my head which either use ODF as their primary document formats, or plan to in the near future. They've all done so because it makes sense for users to be saving in an interchangable and properly standardised format, and it means that somebody's application suite doesn't have to be decided by their archive of documents they have to be able to reliably open. Unfortunately the number of implementing office suites doesn't equate to widespread usage because the provider of the most popular Office suite, which controls the market and locks people in, has strong priorities that completely ignore what's best for customers.
Microsoft will never natively support ODF if they have anything to say about it, even if it is best for their customers. This is because their own unimplementable formats give it not just control over individual customers, but a virally* distributive control over everyone with whom their customers exchange documents. Consequently the most popular Office suite will always be decided by Microsoft's lock-in tactics rather than which suite is actually best for customers.
I'm sorry but if Microsoft's skewed priorities have led it to interfere with government processes and corrupt them at everyone else's expense, simply so it can keep control of the market and continue its monopoly, then I'm fully in favour of complaining and making it known as clearly and noisily as possible and every level where it occurred.
* If Microsoft can refer to the GPL as viral then I'm going to do the same for Office.
Not everyone can "direct it towards building a better product." We do what we can, and if that means crying foul and bitching, so be it.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
This is offtopic...
Money is the root of all evil?
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
Put another way: No, we can't win by throwing large sacks of cash around, the way Microsoft is. You found us out -- we simply cannot compete.
I, for one, would much rather win on technical merits. But technical merits can't buy people the way money can. The best we can do is take away their ability to simply throw large sacks of money around, by calling them on it.
Oh, and "suing" is not "whining" by a long shot. Suing is doing something about it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Care to give an example?
what stuff? Bring an example.
Or modding down? :o) They're the same everywhere, aren't they?
I don't pay too much attention to people who don't even know a Jane from a John...
If the people over at the ISO have any level of logic left within their collective, they would have some respect for ODF and the people who worked on it and drop it. It is impossible for ODF to exist favorably in the face of of MS-OOXML for several, non-technical reasons
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
The question is of course, how to counter this?
Why doesn't SCO just have the Federal Reserve bail them out. Dumbasses.
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
For you and prockcore, stuff like (somebody correct me if I am wrong):
FormatLikeWord95
AutospaceLikeWord97
Well, how DOES Word 95 format stuff? And how does Word97 format stuff? People outside of Microsoft don't know because Word 95 and 97 store their data in binary formats (not human readable), and so we are forced to reverse engineer the formats to achieve compatibility. A standard is supposed to eliminate the need for one segment of a market to reverse engineer another segment, by specifying EXACTLY how everything should work, down to the minutest detail (like formatting). If you do not have all these details, the standard is incomplete, and must therefore NOT be considered as "already in place in the Market", NOR "implementable by external parties (without reverse engineering)".
The ISO process that OOXML passed was for completely specified, already-in-place (de facto) market standards, NOT the proprietary whims of a single segment of the market.
In addition to being incompletely specified, there is not guarantee Microsoft will not sue anybody who implements the format, which is also against the purpose of a standard.
All in all, OOXML was passed NOT on technical merits, NOR the freedom from legal proceedings (from lawsuits), NOR being the de facto market standard. There was NO reason for OOXML to pass, and yet it did, with highly irregular (cue the jokesters) voting procedures from a suspicious number of countries. OOXML should not have passed, and, because it did, we are all now asking for it to be formally challenged for an ISO standard.
Would you care to give an example of such an independent implementation? According to Alex Brown, the person who convened the Ballot Resolution Meeting for ISO/IEC, Microsoft's own current current implementation does not conform to the 'standard'
Ah, NOW I see what you mean. Why, in fact, I've just implemented the standard myself right here:
main(){exit(1);}
What do you mean my implementation doesn't conform? Neither does Microsoft's.
The issue is that OOXML is an inferior "standard", which has been forced through the process using bribery, corruption and ignorance, and all while a superior standard for the same thing already exists. If microsoft were truly interested in standards and interoperability at all, they would have implemented the existing standard, and joined it's steering committee when they were first invited several years ago.
We don't want to be forced to use that inferior format, simply because microsoft bought and paid for enough people at standards boards, as this will hurt the industry as a whole. It's only microsoft who stands to benefit from OOXML, everyone else loses in one way or another.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Saying that the people could care less implies that they actually care about the issue to some degree, which is not what you mean. I see this a fair bit, and wonder why all the fucking nazis around here aren't all over it.
With logic. Brutal, unforgiving logic. Delivered coolly and calmly, to the right people, in the right places, at the right times. Every mind at a time.
Since I'm not too lazy to look it up for myself:
-----
2.15.3.6 autoSpaceLikeWord95 (Emulate Word 95 Full-Width Character Spacing)
This element specifies that applications shall emulate the behavior of a previously existing word processing application (Microsoft Word 95) when determining the spacing between full-width East Asian characters in a document's content.
[Guidance: To faithfully replicate this behavior, applications must imitate the behavior of that application, which involves many possible behaviors and cannot be faithfully placed into narrative for this Office Open XML Standard. If applications wish to match this behavior, they must utilize and duplicate the output of those applications. It is recommended that applications not intentionally replicate this behavior as it was deprecated due to issues with its output, and is maintained only for compatibility with existing documents from that application. end guidance]
-----
Now, can people please stop pretending that this stuff doesn't exist?
It's real, and it is laughable.
Thanks.
Deny everything, admit nothing, demand proof, and reject the proof.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Correction, should read: One mind at a time.
I think there is a broad over-reliance on legal remedies for political problems. Part of that is the fact that, due to the ignorance of the electorate (rational ignorance, IMHO) and the substantial influence of corporate interests on the elected officials, legal action looks like the most promising avenue for progress. This is a false hope. Courts will not vindicate the ideals of the FOSS movement.
How about this?
i thought one of the major problems of ooxml is that it will only be implemented by other companies, not by microsoft, who will come out with a product that supports a broken version of ooxml and renders ooxml documents created in staroffice (for example) incorrectly.
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Hardly. The CCITT (and later ISO) networking standards encompassed two separate flavours of network layer, 5 classes of transport protocol and a couple of protocol layers that no-one has ever had much need for. Implementation of those standards would pretty much guarantee divergence.
Standards are in the end created for vendors who want to sell implementations. Where multiple vendors are involved, the standard will be a messy compromise resulting from horse-trading over perceived entrenched advantages of particular companies in particular marketplaces.
In this case there's only one vendor involved essentially and the standard is not really implementable in its entirety by anyone else. So what? No-one else is obliged to implement it any more than Slashdot is obliged to run CCITT Transport Class 2 over X.25.
Standards aren't produced in an academic environment. People who work on them have to have their time and travel paid for - and their membership fees. They're there to sell product and in the end the dominant product will determine the dominant standard. It's naive to imagine anything else.
Because only MS can implement it. Which means, nothing will change and your ooxml documents will still be hostage to MS, which will still force you on the upgrade treadmill.
And even if you completely accept you fate and buy upgrade after upgrade, your old documents may still not be time-proof. For example, MS decided that I should not be able to open my thesis files anymore.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
If you are going to be as picky as Brown was there, then you run into the problem that ODF suffers from the same problem. OpenOffice often produces ODF documents that do not strictly follow the standard. The deviations of Office from transitional OOXML are no more severe than the deviations of OpenOffice from the ISO version of ODF.
If, on the other hand, you are going to cut enough slack to allow OpenOffice to count as implementing ODF, then anything that implements ECMA-376 is also at least a transitional OOXML implementation, and then besides Office and Office Mac, there is Pages and Numbers from Apple, NeoOffice on the Mac, TextEdit on the Mac, at least three open source OOXML/ODF translators, Thinkfree Office, Dataviz, and Google.
It seems to be some sort of Americanism which despite making no sense is in quite wide usage.
The irony of this is that your post will never receive the editors' attention because they browse at +5.
...and the you come here and whine about those who whine about whiners. Whiner!
truncateFontHeightsLikeWP6 (Emulate WordPerfect 6.x Font Height Calculation)
Without access to WordPerfect 6's Font Height Calculation routines, it is impossible to exactly replicate this behaviour, thus rendering your application non-conformant to the OOXML "standard".
Goten Xiao
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
If you want to understand this thoroughly and completely, the most reasonable thing to do would be to just read the standard. It's only a few thousand pages. You should be able to grind your way through it in a few days. ISO did.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
It's an idiom. They often don't make logical sense and don't partake of a fixed system of meaning, rather their meaning relies on an accepted cultural understanding. In contrast, modern English spelling is a fixed system, and you should know that the word is "grammar" and not "grammer" if you're going to make a complaint like this.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Actually, the advantage of standards is that it makes it easy to compare prices charged by different vendors. So if you've been buying screws from a certain vendor, and you get a lower bid from Acme Tool and Die. Well, it's a hex head, 12mm, and it comes with a matching bolt. It looks good. How strong is it? How did you measure the strength?
The problem with OOXML is that it doesn't do anything to help you choose between vendors.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I proveded evidence for my assertions. Care to return the favor, or do you prefer unsubstantiated one-liners?
Deny everything, admit nothing, demand proof, and reject the proof.
Here, from all of about 6 posts up the page.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
No, it makes them look like they've looked at the ISO procedures, requirements, etc, and said, "Hey, this is completely out-of-the-ordinary!" No, it just says to onlookers that Microsoft's standard is so advanced that even the best and brightest of the computing world can't implement the difficult parts of it. OMFG, do you even believe what you're posting? Anything that's too advanced for anyone to implement has no business being in a standard. A standard should be explaining the interactions, not obfuscating them. If the standard cannot be implemented, IT IS NOT A STANDARD .OCO is Loco
OOXML_IS_BORING
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
The summary struck me as odd, in claiming that the Unix group are suing for a number of complaints including the patents. Judicial review in the common law jurisdictions is generally limited to review for legality (ignoring proportionality and human rights for the moment), as opposed to review on the merits, and the patents complaint would be merits based. The claim is actually on the basis that the BSI didn't follow the processes they were required to follow, the patents issue is something the Unix group is upset about but not a ground for judicial review. I just thought I'd point this out, not that it really matters or that anybody cares.
I suddenly envisaged this comment on the CCN forum (if there even is one). "This is whiney trivial crap.... 10,000 news-worthy things happen every day".
:P
"This is the Cable News Network; we're reserve the right to select and present the news we want. Are you not aware of what site you are posting a comment on?"
Sorry, total digression; but it made me laugh
The Long Now Foundation
As many other people who are posting have suggested. This whole situation is getting rather tiresome. The time spent campaigning to get ISO to change would be better spent coming up with APIs and utilities to enable developers to more easily create OOXML files. Neither format is going to go out of usage because of ISO's decision so the best solution for everyone is to support both formats as best as possible.
As for this civil action. I don't think they have a leg to stand on. What I know of the BSI (who are very well respected) is that they don't come to decisions lightly. There's no real evidence their process was flawed.
Yes in the past it's failed their criteria but that was because it didn't take into account ODF in the format. In a direct "pick ODF or OOXML" choice, it isn't fair to use "it isn't like ODF" as reasoning for not picking the format.
With regards to patents, all the defendants will do is say "there's no garentee that ODF is patent free either"
I admit i hadn't heard about that, thanks for the heads-up.
So that just leaves the staggering complexity of the format and the fact that it cannot be legally implemented by commercial open-source projects (unless there has been some change in the latter regard that I am unaware of).
Still, that _is_ an improvement. Of sorts.
Deny everything, admit nothing, demand proof, and reject the proof.
Relax. It's sarcasm. See bad, hot, cool, wicked, and any number of other examples.
You can get down off your grammar nazi guard tower now.
Infuriate left and right
And NeoOffice supports it now.
As does Corel WordPerfect Office.
And Apple's iWork '08 (and Textedit. And the iPhone).
And Thinkfree Office.
And Gnumeric.
And QuickOffice.
And Dataviz' DocumentsToGo.
And Datawatch Monarch.
And Zoho Writer.
And Xpertdoc Studio.
(Shall I go on?)
Are you trolling; or just very, very misinformed?
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
For someone that has such a strong opinion, you don't seem to follow it very well.
What you're talking about was changed in the "corrections" submitted to the BRM. So why are you still using it as an excuse?
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
You are aware that it's not even possible for Office to be compatible yet, right? What's OpenOffice's excuse, though? Why aren't they compatible with ODF 1.1 or 1.2?
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
I do love Slashdot, but the apparent wish of the entire community to remain wilfully and childishly ignorant, insofar as Microsoft is concerned, is really quite disturbing.
The fact that content-free posts like " OOXML is such a foul, repugnant anti-standard " are repeatedly modded 'insightful' -- as are the myrad identical "OOXML is unimplementable because it includes undocumented tagss like autoSpaceLikeWord95" replies that inundate anyone who dares question the dogma of OOXMLBADBADBAD -- whereas any posts, such as the parent, which try to point out that autoSpaceLikeWord95 is actually documented perfectly well (albeit in the appendix rather than the main body due to its status as deprecated, as mandated by the ECMA), and give the relevent part of the spec are quickly modded down to Score: 0 and stay there...
It does make you wonder how many people are just ignorant, merely repeating what everyone else is saying because they haven't read the spec themselves (it is, after all, quite long); and how many are actually perfectly aware of the relevent facts but just don't like them.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Unfortunately the incompatibility of GPL3 with Microsoft's patent promise has been subject to a bollock-load of FUD from the start, especially because as the Wikipedia article on it notes: The limitations of a one-sided patent promise only applying to covered specifications is also present in the IBM Interoperability Specifications Pledge (ISP) and Sun Microsystems' OpenDocument Patent Statement. So the 'problems' with FOSS implementations of OOXML also extend to any and all implementations of ODF that Sun themselves don't author.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
All the more reason to link to the post in question if you're using it in support, as you quite rightly have in this case.
If I might just address a few words to Macthorpe (since he apparently reads every post in any conversation in which he posts) See, Macthorpe? How hard was that?
Coming back to your point, let me quote from the post you reference:
Now, the trouble I have here, (and I say this as man who writes software for a living), is that while I see reference to an algorithm here, I don't see the algorithm specified. In the post you reference I see a description of what will typically happen in two (or possibly three - the wording seems unclear) cases, and it offers a single example.
Now this would be adequate for an in-house functional spec, where I might be asked to produce something kind-of-sort-of like what it says in the spec. But for an international standard that is supposed to enable interoperability between independently authored applications, the quoted passage is woefully inadequate.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Note the future tense.
Maybe, Slashdotters are just slow readers and haven't finished reading the 2293 pages of the Disposition of Comments in the past 3 months :-)
Besides, I'm not sure if it is actually a publically readable document: the version on the SC34 website (document #980) is locked and I'm not authorized to download it: DIS29500-2008-002.pdf
There's some meta-info about the document by Rick Jelliffe here: Interestingly, Jelliffe wrote:
So I say: go UKUUG! Sue their pants off! (and I'm not even a Brit).
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Characters in the following Unicode ranges should be treated as non-ideographic, even though those characters are ideographic: U+FF66-U+FF9F. Everything else is commentary.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
After you, sir.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Actually, on a second reading, that does indeed look suitably precise. I would like it worded a little less ambiguously, especially given some of the creative interpretations of standards MS have made in the past, but yeah, that looks like it might be sufficient.
I'll still be very surprised if they've addressed all the issues considered at the BRM, let alone all the comments from the national standards bodies.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Yes, yes, conceeded.
No, and I wasn't trying suggest that quoted passage was inadequate for any purposes beyond implementing the autoSpaceLikeWord95 behavior. My apologies for any confusion on that point.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Um, no, it's not an idiom; "could care less" is just a typo. "Couldn't care less" is the idiomatic phrase, a poetic rendering of "don't care". Actually, show me an idiom that is the simple reverse of its literal counterpart... they tend to be more subtle, complex, or archaic than that.
(Besides, one could argue that there is no "fixed" system of meaning; it's all more or less reliant on accepted cultural understanding. But let's digress.)
Um, yes, it is. The Oxford English Dictionary notes it as a valid idiomatic usage, documented since the 1960s, not a typo.
Idioms which are a reverse of their literal meaning could include "fat chance" (the chance is, in fact, very slim). "Sick" has come to mean "very good" in certain idiomatic usage, just as "bad" did in the early 90s. "Cool" and "hot" can mean the same thing. There is also the use of irony and euphemism idiomatically, of course. For example, the phrase "sweetness and light" is used to indicate that someone/something is quite the opposite. "Break a leg" means that you want the person to do well. And how about "head over heels"? How many of us don't have our head above our heels?
The point is that idioms are often figurative, and the "literal" meaning of their words doesn't add up to the pragmatic meaning the phrase has as a whole.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Specifically, the ODF page says:
Notice the language: Any implementation under the current version. Future versions only if Sun is involved in making the new version of the standard.
With regard to implementations, IBM defines their "covered implementation" as:
Which is referring to Sun participating in subsequent versions of the standard, not participating in creating the implementation of the current standard. This is a very different thing.
and the ODF Patent pledge reads:
So as far as I can tell, IBM and Sun have explicitly waived their ability to sue any implementation of the current ODF standard for patent infringement.
Unfortuantely I can't find a clear definition of "Covered Implementation" on the applicable Microsoft page, but the objections to it have been fairly well documented (ie. http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/osp-gpl.html).
Deny everything, admit nothing, demand proof, and reject the proof.
I have never, ever heard the "could care less" version prior to very recently on the internet - everyone I know uses "couldn't care less" and also consider the "could care less" version wrong. I have never heard "could care less" on any TV show or movie, its always "couldn't care less". I have never seen "could care less" used in any book I have read (and I am a prolific reader - about a dozen novels in April alone), its always "couldn't care less".
A quick survey in a dozen IRC channels also find that "couldn't care less" is the preferred version, with most people saying "could care less" is wrong.
Another quick survey of the surround 5 tables in the pub I am currently sat also find "could care less" brings puzzlement, with everyone agreeing "couldn't care less" is the correct version.
Bearing all that in mind, while it may be 'recognised' by certain publications, common usage is apparently very small, with the alternative being much more common around the world.
"certain publications"... yeah. You know that a survey of your friends is not scientific, I assume?
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
You do realise that real experience beats textbooks hands down any day of the week, right?
The OED bases all of its word definitions on actual usage examples, noting whether those usages are archaic, specific to a certain geographical area, only used in particular trades, and so on. Add to that the fact that you've just seen the phrase used on slashdot, and that while some here have found it odd, others are clearly quite used to seeing and hearing it. In fact, I think the original complaint was about the ubiquity of this phrasing. I'm British, but I've heard it often enough on American TV.
This suggests that your experience isn't broad enough to encompass the vernacular English spoken by every section of the population. Indeed, no-one's is, and that's why we use resources like OED to tell us whether a certain term or phrase is known in common usage or is a simple typo.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
That's a good point. One that I obviously missed earlier. Thanks.
I don't therefore I'm not.