MS & Linux - just some thoughts

We could argue all week about what licenses are free or not, but one thing is for sure. Microsoft did what many people wanted for too long. They've opened their format. How open is it really? Enough to build competitive applications that can use them. And that's all what really mattered to the big boys. I don't think people seriously thought Microsoft will let some OSS people jeapordize their bussiness. After all MS was and is openly against GPL.

What I'm trying to say is that they _are_ open enough to build competitive products (I bet people at Sun are still drinking to that one). Office products have their money in bussinesses - and those people usually don't give a crap about open source. They just want something that does the same thing for less price.

Please explain to me how will Microsoft have your data? The _ONLY_ way you can't use their format is if you choose the GPL license (I'm not 100 sure about others - I think you can use it with LGPL). And that is GPL's problem, because it is a license that demands everything and anything that even remotely touches it's code to be open.

Sun already confirmed support for MS's new formats and StarOffice is used (although not widely) in enterprises. However you look at this, as an open format or not, it's a win win situation for the consumer. Microsoft will have to make better Office suites or Sun (or Apple with Pages) will take their bussiness away.

 

I'm not talking about which licenses are free and to what degree. I'm saying that the competition MS would find is mainly in F/OSS and they're remaining closed to that. Of course they are, they'd have to innovate compete and work hard. As soon as netscape went out and until Mozilla started picking up steam IE went to completely crap.

Unless one can freely translate between one representation to another for whatever data they might have they don't have control over their data. Since one can't freely do whatever they please with the information about the document formats that MS uses, one doesn't have control over their data and their data is hostage. This shouldn't be a difficulty concept. Open enough and so on doesn't work, because you're still restricted and thus not in control of your data.

 

I disagree with that. I don't think Office's main competition would (will) come from OSS as clearly bussinesses are scared of it and they want someone to offer support. It is proven that large companies don't adapt Linux, because they are scared of the GPL. This was a move that offered Sun (StarOffice) and Apple (iWork) what they've been waiting for a long time.
Then again, Microsoft can (will) have competition from OSS projects. Only not from GPL licensed ones (which is (I believe) the only OSI approved license incompatible with MS's format license).

Below is the license in question:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...en-us/odcXMLRef/html/odcXMLRefLegalNotice.asp

The old BSD license included a similar clause. Do you think that wasn't an OSS license? In fact there are many other OSI approved licenses with a similar clause and (you've guessed) are incompatible with the GPL. In fact, this is a good read - http://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html

I don't think this situation can be compared to EI vs *.* because MS was in no position of locking-in with IE. They were (are) with Office however. The recent Norwegian story comes to mind; for viewing government documents you were forced to use Office (and therefor Windows) and that's why that Norwegian guy freaked out. Now they can put up a link and say you can get a free program to view this documents here.
Also until now, I don't think there was much intuition for making a competitive Office suite, because no matter how good it would've been, no one would use it, because they have .doc files no one understands.

You can already freely translate between .doc (a proprietary, closed format) to a free, open format - either MS's Office 2003 XML (or the new one) or PDF, RTF, HTML,... This is not a concept, because it's not real.

Read the license through; You can basically do anything you want with Office's XML files, granted that you include the above notice in a Licenced Implementation. Where a Licenced Implementation stands for: "A "Licensed Implementation" means only those specific portions of a software product that read and write files that are fully compliant with the specifications for the Office Schemas."

OO can probably still use a converter which would be licensed under a different license then GPL. I'm not 100% about this - maybe GPL also wants those parts of software GPL licensed. So, to answer your question: you _can_ freely translate, modify, create, read,... these formats if the software that does this is licensed under a license that allows that clause - this might even include LGPL.

I'm no GPL expert but if you think MS's license is "restrictive":

"c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)"

That's from the GPL btw.

 

Okay, companies are not afraid of the GPL, that's a load of crap. They don't want to mix it into their products that they feel give them a competitive edge, but otherwise they're not afraid.

Saying GPL products don't come with commercial support is plain daft. Major GPL programs have many companies that provide support.

Depending on the code, people like different licenses. For Linux, people want GPL, no one really wants to go it alone with anything that big unless they have ridiculously deep pockets. For libraries, people want LGPL, because they don't want to be forced to GPL their code and can still make closed source products. For cross linux/bsd systems, people like 3 clause bsd licenses. Licenses themselves have varying applications.

My point here is that the format isn't all that open and the spirit is just as important as the letter.