Slashdotters continue to spout either ignorance or lies regarding OOXML. You suggest that OOXML is "unimplementable"? Then explain this study comparing cross-app compatibility of ODF and OOXML. It gives numerical scores on the ODF and OOXML compatibility of various apps. I'll just list the "Weighed Percent" score for each app:
Results for ODF OpenOffice 100% StarOffice 97% Sun plug-in for Word 96% CleverAge/MS plug-in for Word 94% WordPerfect 86% KOffice 79% Google Docs 76% TextEdit 47% AbiWord 55%
The final implication stems from the surprisingly good results for OOXML implementations. Critics of OOXML have argued that it was too complex and difficult to implement. While OOXML is a long and complex standard, it is possible to offer good compatibility. In fact, our results suggest that implementations of OOXML work as well as implementations of ODF. At the level of basic word-processing that we examined, neither standard had a dominant advantage over the other in terms of compatibility scores. While ODF has had a head start that has lead to more implementations, there appears no reason why OOXML cannot catch up. After all, several developers have provided independent implementations of OOXML.
Doesn't appear that ODF is much more "implementable" than OOXML.
BTW, check out KOffice's ODF compatibility score. KOffice has been promoted around here and other places as the poster child of an ODF implementation independent of OO.o code. Well, KOffice's score isn't horrible, but isn't that great either, certainly not at the "poster child" level.
Caveat: I assume the OOXML that was tested was ECMA OOXML rather than the new ISO OOXML standard. But the ISO version actually is easier to implement than the ECMA standard, so OOXML cross-app compatibility will go up even more when ISO OOXML is implemented by the various apps.
This isn't "punishment", it's Microsoft's "Get out of jail, free!!!" card.
When Windows 7 comes out, if any party has a beef and threatens suing for whatever reason, Microsoft can just say, "The DOJ already approved this, so there!" Windows 7 will be essentially, lawsuit-proof.
You don't *need* a "platform dependent" API. Go go http://openxmldeveloper.org/, and you'll find dozens of Java sample code examples for manipulating OOXML documents.
This.NET based API just makes it all the easier for those that are.NET programmers. Yeah, I know most slashdotters think that.NET is utter crap and therefore any.NET library is useless, but slashdotters aren't the target for this API.
There's nothing preventing slashdotters from making their own OOXML API, or even an ODF API if they want a "platform independent" API.
Well, Google Checkout is one member of a long list of Google "failures" (i.e. products/services that were heralded by pundits and fanboys as products/services that would take over a particular market). Many slashdotters and pundits gleefully predicted PayPal's demise at the hands of Google Checkout; didn't happen. Your proposed "Google Auctions" would suffer a similar fate when going up against ebay.
* Most of Google's products are "failures", not that they aren't good or even successful, but only in the sense that they aren't the market leader. But the same goes for nearly every large company in existence. But Google's fans seeme to think that Google is #1 in everything they do and can bring down anybody at will. It ain't so.
The computer in the demo is the Dell Latitude XT, which is a decent business tablet PC, but is one of the slowest Tablet PCs on the market. It uses either an Intel Solo 1.06GHz CPU or an Intel Core Duo 1.2GHz CPU. Like I said, it's all right for business uses (i.e. no multimedia/games/etc), but doesn't compare to home tablet PCs when it comes to power. In fact, at Dell's site, the Latitude XT is listed in the "business laptops" section, not the more powerful "home laptops" section.
"There's a reason this doesn't already exist in OS X."
Yes, and that's because Apple makes no desktop/laptop computers with touch displays. The demo shows that Win7's multitouch works with any digitized touch display, which includes just about every Tablet PC currently on the market (the demo uses Dell's quite unremarkable tablet pc). It's not a surprise that since Apple doesn't even make tablet computers at all that they don't make multi-touch ones either.
The "STANDARD USABLE menu system" is overwhemled by Office's features, so they dumped it rather than keep force-feeding things into that already overburdened old UI.
Check out The Story of the Ribbon blog entry by Jensen Harris, which includes presentations in PowerPoint and PDF formats, as well as a 90-minute video on why and how the new UI came to be. It's fascinating, and the best UI presentation I've seen.
If Office 2k7's UI had been produced by some OSS outfit, slashdotters would be praising it to the heights and mocking Microsoft for being stuck behind the times.
So, "Don't be evil unless it may cost you money"? Huh, doesn't sound so noble anymore.
Of course, anybody that feels the need to preemptively and constantly proclaim their "non-evilness" is more likely to actually BE evil. Just like those that constantly say, "I'm not a racist" are the most likely to actually be racists, since they feel the need to declare the opposite.
And if *you* "really cared about education so much" instead of merely caring about spreading the OSS-for-everything philosophy (plus hoping to bring down Microsoft), you'd be pleased that the OLPC project is modifying its offering according to the wishes of the governments, so that governments will actually buy these machines for their schoolchildren to use. Up till now, governments were simply not buying because of the lack of Windows.
RTFA, or even better, read the BBC's article, which puts it in very blunt terms:
The move was prompted by countries which demanded the operating system before placing an order.
...
"While it is certainly true that it has not taken off as fast as I would have hoped and publicly stated, certain countries around the world... have always been very, very insistent that they want Windows as an option," Nicholas Negroponte told BBC News.
...
The options afforded by Windows will be welcomed by the governments of countries, such as Egypt, which has insisted on being offered the operating system before signing up to the scheme.
Other customers and partners have already applauded the shift.
"Windows support on the XO device means that our students and educators will now have access to more than computer-assisted learning experiences," said Andres Gonzalez Diaz, governor of Cundinamarca, Colombia. All of the gnashing of teeth on slashdot reveals that the primary reason for many slashdotters' support of the OLPC effort was NOT a desire to aid in education, but rather to indoctrinate children with Linux/OSS in the hopes that this would eventually bring down Microsoft.
Actually, Microsoft's OSI licenses originally had different names, and OSI requested Microsoft rename them during the OSI approval process. The current names are OSI's doing.
And please, these licenses are very short (much shorter than GPL) and are easy to understand (unlike GPL). If a dev can't tell the the difference between Ms-RL and Ms-LRL (the example used in the summary), even though both are only 3 paragraphs long, it's clear what the difference is, and Microsoft makes it clear which is OSI-approved and which is not, then he's an idiot to begin with. Nobody is going to be confused by these licenses.
Microsoft haters had hoped to get governments to mandate exclusive use of ODF based on its ISO status, and in so doing codify into law ODF's feature set, thus making it illegal to use features that ODF doesn't support. The result of this would be to codify OO.o's feature set into law and make it illegal to use MS Office features that OO.o lacks (because the exclusively mandated ODF lacks support for said features). This would put an end any and all competition on based on features (where MSO kicks OO.o's ass) and just let the competition be on price (where OO.o kicks MSO's ass).
OOXML getting ISO approval undermines the call to standardize on ODF based purely on ISO status, thus undercutting the above strategy.
Slashdotters hate to have anyone spell out so plainly, so they'll mod me down into oblivion (and won't offer up a cogent argument against what I've said). They prefer a big circle jerk, especially on this topic.
Why make your own Linux distro when you can make money offering programs/services for managing/supporting others' distros? If Microsoft put their minds to it, they could easily hire a bunch of Linux gurus and offer better and/or cheaper support for Red Hat's own distros, and put Red Hat out of business. (Of course, that's part of the risk of the support-based revenue business model; if others can provide better support than you can for your own products, you're screwed.)
So the proper thing to do is to cut features, even if they have no inherent flaw, for fear that they might be exploited due to sloppy coding by others? That mindset has always bugged me. Seems backwards.
According to the chart, Vista's share increased from 3.75% a year ago to 14% today. The chart also shows that XP's share decreased from 82% to 73.6%. Vista has been cannibalizing XP's share, but Vista+XP today has a 1.6 percentage points greater share today than a year ago (86% in March 2007 to 87.6% in March 2008).
The chart shows that Mac share went from 6.5% a year ago to 7.5% today, which is a significant increase. But note that the chart separates PPC Macs ("Mac OS") from Intel Macs ("MacIntel"), and here you can see that MacIntel's share has increased from 2.5% to 4.5% while PPC Mac OS decreased from 4% down to 3%. That is, most Mac sales are due to people upgrading from Mac PPC to Mac Intel in the same way that most Vista sales are at the expense of XP's share.
So XP+Vista increased by 1.6 percentage points from a year ago, while PPC Mac + Intel Mac increased by 2% from a year ago. Not much difference, and with Vista well ahead of the combined Mac total (14% vs 7%) it's difficult to argue that Vista caused mass defections to the Mac.
However it CAN be argued when you look at the Windows 2000 stats. Windows 2000 went from 4.3% to 2.3% during that same time period. It appears that of that loss of 2 percentage points, 1.7 went to Vista and the other 0.3 went to MacIntel. I think that Mac also gained from the decrease in "Other", which decreased from 2.5% to 1.9%.
"Anyone except open source programmers, since the license for ooxml is incompatible with the GPL."
Huh, I didn't know that "open source programmers" == "GPL". There are many OSI licenses that ARE compatible with OOXML even if GPL is not. And I don't concede your point even regarding GPL, since Gnumeric implements OOXML with GPL code.
"As well, the patent situation is another large roadblock for open source (not to mention anyone else). So really, not just anyone can use it."
The patent provisions are the same as for ODF. Jason Matusow has recently posted two blog entries regarding the IP issues regarding OOXML (and compares it with ODF, PDF, etc), which are very good reads. (Yes, he works for Microsoft, so you might just dismiss him as a liar, but if you're willing to read Rob Weir and Groklaw, and take what they have to say as unquestioned Gospel, you might want to at least take a look what the other side has to say; if anything it'll make your own arguments stronger in the future.) More Open XML Discussion - more misunderstandings about standards and IP IP, RAND, Standards, OSP, ISP - the conversation continues...
Here's an excerpt from the first blog entry:
The ISO/IEC JTC 1 patent policy is applied uniformly to all standards in the ISO/IEC JTC 1 arena. The idea that the RAND declaration regarding Open XML is any different than a RAND declaration for ODF or for any other ISO Standard (such as...oh I don't know...how about PDF just for fun. Remember the huge list of patents that Adobe used to put on the welcome screen of the Acrobat reader alone?). The terms provided for the Microsoft patents in Open XML are legally irrevocable. They are global. Since they are broader than the RAND declaration for JTC 1, the attempt at FUD by the Groklaw post should be recognized for what it is...FUD.
Incidentally, both of the above blog entries point out that Linux distros already ship software under licenses that are incompatible with each other, making today's Linux distros technically illegal already. In the second blog entry, Jason goes on to say regarding this:
Legal snags like the ones I mentioned only matter if someone presses it in a court case. No one can say if these issues will ever become an issue but that has never stopped a single person from using Linux. So, when people then say that the MS OSP, or IBM's ISP, or RAND terms, or whatever means that Free Software developers can't develop something, I find it hard to take seriously when the intent, and all of the materials surrounding these actions speak of building bridges and enabling...not shutting down or threatening. Those same developers are willing to take those exact same issues as no concern on one hand and then scream foul on the other.
(BTW, regarding the GPL, I'll quote a comment made by 'hAL' to the second blog entry: "Both the 'Interoperability Specification Pledge' from IBM (on for instance ODF v1.0/v1.1) and Suns 'Covenant Not to Sue' suffer from the same issue with GPL as Microsofts OSP licensing. GPL3 code can be reused outside the limits of those RAND licenses. Any patent protection by IBM and Sun on OpenDocument and from Micrsoft on OOXML will not apply if the GPL code is reused in a project that does not fall under those licenses. As Suns covenant only applies to OpenDocument reuse of patent protected code from an ODF code for anything else but an ODF implementation voids the covenant.")
Anyway, the post to which I replied talked of nobody being able to implement OOXML support besides Microsoft. He didn't say anything about "open source programmers", let alone "GPL". As long as there are other OOXML programs, even if they are closed source programs, ta
There is talk of the SDK code being released under MS-PL as open source, which would address your issue (but it's not been decided and it won't be the case initially from what I've read).
Besides that, I can almost guarantee that someone will make an open source (probably GPL) OOXML library. The Microsoft sponsored ODF/OOXML convertor is an open source project on SourceForge. Someone could probably make an OOXML library out of that if they wished.
"That should just about immediately eliminate OOXML, as I hear the biggest complaint was that there is parts of it that are just not implementable by anyone but Microsoft."
Yes, that's the propaganda that one hears constantly.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdotters continue to spout either ignorance or lies regarding OOXML.
You suggest that OOXML is "unimplementable"?
Then explain this study comparing cross-app compatibility of ODF and OOXML.
It gives numerical scores on the ODF and OOXML compatibility of various apps. I'll just list the "Weighed Percent" score for each app:
Results for ODF
OpenOffice 100%
StarOffice 97%
Sun plug-in for Word 96%
CleverAge/MS plug-in for Word 94%
WordPerfect 86%
KOffice 79%
Google Docs 76%
TextEdit 47%
AbiWord 55%
Results for OOXML
Office 2007 100%
Office 2003 100%
Office 2008 (Mac) 99%
OpenOffice 96%
Pages 95%
WordPerfect 84%
ThinkFree Office 83%
TextEdit 43%
The final implication stems from the surprisingly good results for OOXML implementations. Critics of OOXML have argued that it was too complex and difficult to implement. While OOXML is a long and complex standard, it is possible to offer good compatibility. In fact, our results suggest that implementations of OOXML work as well as implementations of ODF. At the level of basic word-processing that we examined, neither standard had a dominant advantage over the other in terms of compatibility scores. While ODF has had a head start that has lead to more implementations, there appears no reason why OOXML cannot catch up. After all, several developers have provided independent implementations of OOXML.
Doesn't appear that ODF is much more "implementable" than OOXML.
BTW, check out KOffice's ODF compatibility score. KOffice has been promoted around here and other places as the poster child of an ODF implementation independent of OO.o code. Well, KOffice's score isn't horrible, but isn't that great either, certainly not at the "poster child" level.
Caveat: I assume the OOXML that was tested was ECMA OOXML rather than the new ISO OOXML standard. But the ISO version actually is easier to implement than the ECMA standard, so OOXML cross-app compatibility will go up even more when ISO OOXML is implemented by the various apps.
They could've used Red Flag Linux for free. Was it not up to the task, period?
They didn't "abandon" managed Direct X. It still exists and is still supported. I think WorldWide Telescope uses it.
What they did do was stop development of version 2.0 (it reached beta but that's it), because it became subsumed by XNA.
"Every user I know personally who has tried Vista rolled back to XP or moved to Linux."
Sounds like you work for a PR department to make such a PR-ish statement. Give us real numbers. How many users are you talking about, one? Two?
Dollars to donuts, if the story said "Apple" or "Google" rather than "Microsoft", you'd be praising it to the heights.
Take of your "I hate Microsoft" blinders when evaluating a technology, and you'll get a better perspective on whether it's good or not.
This isn't "punishment", it's Microsoft's "Get out of jail, free!!!" card.
When Windows 7 comes out, if any party has a beef and threatens suing for whatever reason, Microsoft can just say, "The DOJ already approved this, so there!" Windows 7 will be essentially, lawsuit-proof.
You don't *need* a "platform dependent" API.
.NET based API just makes it all the easier for those that are .NET programmers. Yeah, I know most slashdotters think that .NET is utter crap and therefore any .NET library is useless, but slashdotters aren't the target for this API.
Go go http://openxmldeveloper.org/, and you'll find dozens of Java sample code examples for manipulating OOXML documents.
This
There's nothing preventing slashdotters from making their own OOXML API, or even an ODF API if they want a "platform independent" API.
Well, Google Checkout is one member of a long list of Google "failures" (i.e. products/services that were heralded by pundits and fanboys as products/services that would take over a particular market). Many slashdotters and pundits gleefully predicted PayPal's demise at the hands of Google Checkout; didn't happen. Your proposed "Google Auctions" would suffer a similar fate when going up against ebay.
* Most of Google's products are "failures", not that they aren't good or even successful, but only in the sense that they aren't the market leader. But the same goes for nearly every large company in existence. But Google's fans seeme to think that Google is #1 in everything they do and can bring down anybody at will. It ain't so.
Two aspects that are particular to this case:
1. Apple is installing Safari, malware/spyware-style, by piggybacking on iTunes/Quicktime "updates".
2. According to the summary (I didn't RTFA), Apple has explicitly sated that they "refuse" to fix the problem.
The computer in the demo is the Dell Latitude XT, which is a decent business tablet PC, but is one of the slowest Tablet PCs on the market. It uses either an Intel Solo 1.06GHz CPU or an Intel Core Duo 1.2GHz CPU. Like I said, it's all right for business uses (i.e. no multimedia/games/etc), but doesn't compare to home tablet PCs when it comes to power. In fact, at Dell's site, the Latitude XT is listed in the "business laptops" section, not the more powerful "home laptops" section.
"There's a reason this doesn't already exist in OS X."
Yes, and that's because Apple makes no desktop/laptop computers with touch displays. The demo shows that Win7's multitouch works with any digitized touch display, which includes just about every Tablet PC currently on the market (the demo uses Dell's quite unremarkable tablet pc). It's not a surprise that since Apple doesn't even make tablet computers at all that they don't make multi-touch ones either.
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/rss.xml
"And of course users can set ODF to be the default format if they wish, the same way they would for other Word, Excel or PowerPoint formats."
The "STANDARD USABLE menu system" is overwhemled by Office's features, so they dumped it rather than keep force-feeding things into that already overburdened old UI.
Check out The Story of the Ribbon blog entry by Jensen Harris, which includes presentations in PowerPoint and PDF formats, as well as a 90-minute video on why and how the new UI came to be. It's fascinating, and the best UI presentation I've seen.
If Office 2k7's UI had been produced by some OSS outfit, slashdotters would be praising it to the heights and mocking Microsoft for being stuck behind the times.
So, "Don't be evil unless it may cost you money"? Huh, doesn't sound so noble anymore.
Of course, anybody that feels the need to preemptively and constantly proclaim their "non-evilness" is more likely to actually BE evil. Just like those that constantly say, "I'm not a racist" are the most likely to actually be racists, since they feel the need to declare the opposite.
RTFA, or even better, read the BBC's article, which puts it in very blunt terms: The move was prompted by countries which demanded the operating system before placing an order.
"While it is certainly true that it has not taken off as fast as I would have hoped and publicly stated, certain countries around the world... have always been very, very insistent that they want Windows as an option," Nicholas Negroponte told BBC News.
The options afforded by Windows will be welcomed by the governments of countries, such as Egypt, which has insisted on being offered the operating system before signing up to the scheme.
Other customers and partners have already applauded the shift.
"Windows support on the XO device means that our students and educators will now have access to more than computer-assisted learning experiences," said Andres Gonzalez Diaz, governor of Cundinamarca, Colombia. All of the gnashing of teeth on slashdot reveals that the primary reason for many slashdotters' support of the OLPC effort was NOT a desire to aid in education, but rather to indoctrinate children with Linux/OSS in the hopes that this would eventually bring down Microsoft.
Actually, Microsoft's OSI licenses originally had different names, and OSI requested Microsoft rename them during the OSI approval process. The current names are OSI's doing.
And please, these licenses are very short (much shorter than GPL) and are easy to understand (unlike GPL). If a dev can't tell the the difference between Ms-RL and Ms-LRL (the example used in the summary), even though both are only 3 paragraphs long, it's clear what the difference is, and Microsoft makes it clear which is OSI-approved and which is not, then he's an idiot to begin with. Nobody is going to be confused by these licenses.
Microsoft haters had hoped to get governments to mandate exclusive use of ODF based on its ISO status, and in so doing codify into law ODF's feature set, thus making it illegal to use features that ODF doesn't support. The result of this would be to codify OO.o's feature set into law and make it illegal to use MS Office features that OO.o lacks (because the exclusively mandated ODF lacks support for said features). This would put an end any and all competition on based on features (where MSO kicks OO.o's ass) and just let the competition be on price (where OO.o kicks MSO's ass).
OOXML getting ISO approval undermines the call to standardize on ODF based purely on ISO status, thus undercutting the above strategy.
Slashdotters hate to have anyone spell out so plainly, so they'll mod me down into oblivion (and won't offer up a cogent argument against what I've said). They prefer a big circle jerk, especially on this topic.
Why make your own Linux distro when you can make money offering programs/services for managing/supporting others' distros? If Microsoft put their minds to it, they could easily hire a bunch of Linux gurus and offer better and/or cheaper support for Red Hat's own distros, and put Red Hat out of business. (Of course, that's part of the risk of the support-based revenue business model; if others can provide better support than you can for your own products, you're screwed.)
So the proper thing to do is to cut features, even if they have no inherent flaw, for fear that they might be exploited due to sloppy coding by others? That mindset has always bugged me. Seems backwards.
Seems to work just fine for Apple. ;)
Actually, not as much as one might think, according to this chart showing the OS userbase trend from May 2007 to March 2008.
According to the chart, Vista's share increased from 3.75% a year ago to 14% today. The chart also shows that XP's share decreased from 82% to 73.6%. Vista has been cannibalizing XP's share, but Vista+XP today has a 1.6 percentage points greater share today than a year ago (86% in March 2007 to 87.6% in March 2008).
The chart shows that Mac share went from 6.5% a year ago to 7.5% today, which is a significant increase. But note that the chart separates PPC Macs ("Mac OS") from Intel Macs ("MacIntel"), and here you can see that MacIntel's share has increased from 2.5% to 4.5% while PPC Mac OS decreased from 4% down to 3%. That is, most Mac sales are due to people upgrading from Mac PPC to Mac Intel in the same way that most Vista sales are at the expense of XP's share.
So XP+Vista increased by 1.6 percentage points from a year ago, while PPC Mac + Intel Mac increased by 2% from a year ago. Not much difference, and with Vista well ahead of the combined Mac total (14% vs 7%) it's difficult to argue that Vista caused mass defections to the Mac.
However it CAN be argued when you look at the Windows 2000 stats. Windows 2000 went from 4.3% to 2.3% during that same time period. It appears that of that loss of 2 percentage points, 1.7 went to Vista and the other 0.3 went to MacIntel. I think that Mac also gained from the decrease in "Other", which decreased from 2.5% to 1.9%.
Given that no app is "100% compliant with the complete spec" wrt ODF (not even OO.o, on whose previous XML format ODF is based (according to xml.openoffice.org, as of 12/2006)), do you really want to go there?
Huh, I didn't know that "open source programmers" == "GPL". There are many OSI licenses that ARE compatible with OOXML even if GPL is not. And I don't concede your point even regarding GPL, since Gnumeric implements OOXML with GPL code.
"As well, the patent situation is another large roadblock for open source (not to mention anyone else). So really, not just anyone can use it."
The patent provisions are the same as for ODF.
Jason Matusow has recently posted two blog entries regarding the IP issues regarding OOXML (and compares it with ODF, PDF, etc), which are very good reads. (Yes, he works for Microsoft, so you might just dismiss him as a liar, but if you're willing to read Rob Weir and Groklaw, and take what they have to say as unquestioned Gospel, you might want to at least take a look what the other side has to say; if anything it'll make your own arguments stronger in the future.)
More Open XML Discussion - more misunderstandings about standards and IP
IP, RAND, Standards, OSP, ISP - the conversation continues...
Here's an excerpt from the first blog entry:
The ISO/IEC JTC 1 patent policy is applied uniformly to all standards in the ISO/IEC JTC 1 arena. The idea that the RAND declaration regarding Open XML is any different than a RAND declaration for ODF or for any other ISO Standard (such as...oh I don't know...how about PDF just for fun. Remember the huge list of patents that Adobe used to put on the welcome screen of the Acrobat reader alone?). The terms provided for the Microsoft patents in Open XML are legally irrevocable. They are global. Since they are broader than the RAND declaration for JTC 1, the attempt at FUD by the Groklaw post should be recognized for what it is...FUD.
Incidentally, both of the above blog entries point out that Linux distros already ship software under licenses that are incompatible with each other, making today's Linux distros technically illegal already. In the second blog entry, Jason goes on to say regarding this:
Legal snags like the ones I mentioned only matter if someone presses it in a court case. No one can say if these issues will ever become an issue but that has never stopped a single person from using Linux. So, when people then say that the MS OSP, or IBM's ISP, or RAND terms, or whatever means that Free Software developers can't develop something, I find it hard to take seriously when the intent, and all of the materials surrounding these actions speak of building bridges and enabling...not shutting down or threatening. Those same developers are willing to take those exact same issues as no concern on one hand and then scream foul on the other.
(BTW, regarding the GPL, I'll quote a comment made by 'hAL' to the second blog entry:
"Both the 'Interoperability Specification Pledge' from IBM (on for instance ODF v1.0/v1.1) and Suns 'Covenant Not to Sue' suffer from the same issue with GPL as Microsofts OSP licensing. GPL3 code can be reused outside the limits of those RAND licenses. Any patent protection by IBM and Sun on OpenDocument and from Micrsoft on OOXML will not apply if the GPL code is reused in a project that does not fall under those licenses. As Suns covenant only applies to OpenDocument reuse of patent protected code from an ODF code for anything else but an ODF implementation voids the covenant.")
Anyway, the post to which I replied talked of nobody being able to implement OOXML support besides Microsoft. He didn't say anything about "open source programmers", let alone "GPL". As long as there are other OOXML programs, even if they are closed source programs, ta
There is talk of the SDK code being released under MS-PL as open source, which would address your issue (but it's not been decided and it won't be the case initially from what I've read).
Besides that, I can almost guarantee that someone will make an open source (probably GPL) OOXML library. The Microsoft sponsored ODF/OOXML convertor is an open source project on SourceForge. Someone could probably make an OOXML library out of that if they wished.
"That should just about immediately eliminate OOXML, as I hear the biggest complaint was that there is parts of it that are just not implementable by anyone but Microsoft."
Yes, that's the propaganda that one hears constantly.
But Microsoft is creating an OOXML SDK that will make it easy to implement OOXML readers and writers. The April CTP of the SDK was just released last week and the complete version 1.0 of the SDK is scheduled for release next month.
http://blogs.msdn.com/erikaehrli/archive/2008/04/17/announcing-the-open-xml-format-sdk-april-ctp.aspx
So I'm afraid that OOXML opponents will have to come up with a new talking point.