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Microsoft Receives Open Source VIP Blessing
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tue Nov 29, 2005 05:22 AM
from the go-with-tux-my-child dept.
from the go-with-tux-my-child dept.
* * Beatles-Beatles writes to let us know that Larry Rosen has given his blessing to the new terms that Microsoft is Making their Office XML Reference Schema available under. Rosen, "the attorney that wrote the book on open source licensing and the man who was the Open Source Initiative's first general counsel and secretary," described this move as the "most significant olive branch to date" to come from the Redmond software giant.
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Submitter is a link spammer-stop posting his stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I the only person who has noticed the numerous stories that get posted by *--Beatles-Beatles? Am I also the only person who has noticed that the link used in is name is a constantly changing URL (depending on the story) with pointers to various scammy sites? Is it not obvious what he's doing? He's using the awesome PageRank of slashdot do promote his sites based on searches that have the word Beatles in them.
It's a small price to pay for free advertising. Find a story, summarize it in 5 minutes, post to slashdot, and get a pagerank boost that advertisers would pay hundreds (or maybe thousands) for. (Text links on high-ranking sites is big business - just ask oreilly).
Slashdot should at least put a ref=nofollow in the links to submitters (or better yet, only link the submitter's name to his/her user page).
In closing, a quick bit of WHOIS shows that all the sites linked by **B-B are registered to Carl Fogle. Carl, cut this crap out.
Re:Submitter is a link spammer-stop posting his st (Score:2, Interesting)
There are two possible explanations:
1. There are no submissions. SM = BB
2. BB is using some kind of automated RSS to email facility to submit stories, and SM is either clueless or in cahoots with BB
Jake.
Re:Submitter is a link spammer-stop posting his st (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot needs content and the guy is providing it. If he's profitting from it, well good for him. He's smarter than the rest of us.
Parent
Re:Submitter is a link spammer-stop posting his st (Score:5, Interesting)
I do, and apparently many others. The problem isn't one guy posting stuff with links to his various websites. That's ok.
The problem is a potential collaboration between this guy and a
And that's where it crosses the line. It certainly is interesting to see that all of his postings were approved by Scuttlemonkey. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.
Parent
Re:Submitter is a link spammer-stop posting his st (Score:5, Informative)
FEC Deciding Future of Political Blogs [slashdot.org]
Here are the ones (currently indexed by Google) that were:
Wifi Camera Uploads without Computer [slashdot.org]
Microsoft Adopts Virtual Licenses [slashdot.org]
Cisco Updates Network Security Technology [slashdot.org]
Google and Oregon Launch Open Source Initiative [slashdot.org]
Open-Source Insurance [slashdot.org]
Archaeological [sic] Uncovers a New Name [slashdot.org]
New Server Chip Niagara [slashdot.org]
Sprint Launchings Music to Mobile Downloads [slashdot.org]
MIT Wireless Campus Tracking Users [slashdot.org]
Consumer Friendly Downloads? [slashdot.org]
Paris Accelerates Move to Open Source [slashdot.org]
Parent
Re:Submitter is a link spammer-stop posting his st (Score:3, Informative)
Here is a dumb thought (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong. I get tired of the trollers here (ifwm comes to mind). But if they are not impacting you or the site (and if they are actually helping it), then who cares?
Re:Here is a dumb thought (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't click on his|her link.
Except it doesn't matter whether anyone here clicks on the link, google's pagerank system is the one "clicking on the link" - the end result being an increase in the guy's ranking in google so that people who don't even know what slashdot is will see the guy's site come up in searches for "beatles" and they will click on the link through google instead.
Parent
Re:Submitter is a link spammer-stop posting his st (Score:5, Informative)
You definitely have a point there. Might be something taco should look into? But just remember your point always has more impact when you sign your post with your name and not just AC.
If you believe in it stand up for it don't just hide in the back ground.
Parent
Re:Submitter is a link spammer-stop posting his st (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps, purchase a subscription? Not when I'm treated that way...
Re:Submitter is a link spammer-stop posting his st (Score:3, Funny)
Daddy needs a free iPod...
Back in Mass. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Back in Mass. (Score:5, Insightful)
That MS chose to present that as if they were being excluded is more about MS' fear of competition and the free market than about reality.
Parent
Re:Back in Mass. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Back in Mass. (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Back in Mass. (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft's track record is one of abusing their monopoly, to abuse their customers. If they're 'responding to the market' they must think that their corporate doomsday clock is at 11:59pm.
So there! (sorry for that last bit, but I just wanted to use *all three* forms of they're/their/there correctly in one post (another sign of the apocalypse)).
Re:Back in Mass. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft doesn't "respond to the market". Microsoft "protects its monopoly".
In this instance, Microsoft saw a significant threat to its MS Office monopoly when Massachusetts decided to support an open document format that others and Microsoft could support. That removed a key advantage that Microsoft holds, i.e., the ability to completely control the document format(s) of office productivity products.
Once Microsoft has lost the advantage of file format control, where is Microsoft's advantage?
Microsoft's biggest fear is having to compete in an open, fair marketspace, without having the ability to leverage its desktop monopoly, or proprietary file formats and protocols, to lock up new markets.
Parent
Is this really open source ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this really open source ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Is this really open source ? (Score:3, Informative)
Did anyone say that this was open source? It's an open specification, not open source — it now allows open source solutions to implement this open specification, too.
Good on Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on guys, cut down the flames and lets think... its only a SMALL start but it is a very significant start. While this might be a one-off tactical move its from one of the most important divisions in Microsoft, its an important move. This is Microsoft ACTIVELY accepting and PROMOTING an Open Source licensing model.
Dinosaurs take a long time to turn (remember IBM?)... has the first synapse fired?
Applaud them when they do good things, it gives more weight to your later critisism.
Re:Good on Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personaly, I will wait and see how real this is. So far, every single time that MS has done something to support a standard or OSS, it turns out to be a trap. Think in terms of their recent attempt at stopping spam via DNS.
Parent
Re:Good on Microsoft... (Score:3, Insightful)
Careful there. I got into professional coding in '86. After doing that for a few years, I realized that IBM was the great evil and not to be trusted. So at that time, I figured that IBM would be the great evil of all time and spent the next few years working on MS and pushing it everywhere. Things changed, showing that I was wrong.
Down the road, we may find that MS will adopt OSS to keep from following SGI, Word Perfect, and Intuit (all these companies will most likely fa
Re:Good on Microsoft... (Score:2)
No, this is Microsoft making a sacrifice to stop the OpenDocument, which would have a good chance of ruining all of Microsoft's revenue from office products, and even worse (for them), break an important pillar of their TC campaign.
Re:Good on Microsoft... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's wait for the licence of patents (Score:5, Insightful)
What Microsoft is likely to do is:
- add own extentions and not release them
- forbid relicencing of patents so that no implementation can be released under LGPL / GPL
IMHO this is just a trick. MS wants everybody to wait for 18 months before this is really released, and prevent Open Source competition with patent licence restrictions.
We'll see this after two years, I hope I'm wrong but if this happends, I'll come back and say:
See, I told you so!
Eleknader
I'm minded to recall a Zap Brannigan quote (Score:5, Funny)
yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
In short: Sure they'll release specs. And just as certainly that which is actually implemented in the next office version will be something different. Probably minor, but crucial differences. Minor enough to be able to say "*shrug*, we just made a few updates and extensions" and crucial enough to prevent interoperability.
And then on the other hand.... (Score:3, Interesting)
MS XML Format sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, it still isn't as open as OpenDocument. Partly for the reason that Microsoft isn't open to contributions to the format, and that they dictate what the format will be like.
Note: Rosen talks about 2003 XML, not Office 12 (Score:4, Interesting)
As I understand it (imperfectly, for sure) there are legaly significant differences between the XML schema for Office 2003 and the upcoming Office 12.
Isn't this a Microsoft Bait-and-Switch? They make enough changes in terms on the legacy Office 2003 schema to continue their lock-in in Mass., but when the state has to update to Office 12 new patented and licensed "extensions" will lock out any competitive options.
Make no mistake, locking out others and maintaining position as The Monopoly is the business plan here.
You are correct, Sir (Score:4, Informative)
There are major differences, both technically and legally, between MS-Office 2003 XML and MS-Office 12 XML. Microsoft is submitting the MS-Office 2003 XML schema to ECMA; so far, they have not indicated they are doing the same with the MSO 12 schema. Also, their covenant not to sue over patents is specific to the 2003 schema. Finally, the 2003 xml schema is optional; it's my understanding that the MSO 12 schema is the primary format for the upcoming version of MS-Office.
Microsoft loses nothing by offering up the 2003 schema as a sacrificial lamb; most people still use
Of course, I could be wrong. But I don't think so.
Parent
How about a... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry again for the offtopic...
Still Does Not Meet MA's Definition Of Open (Score:5, Insightful)
Now of course I fully expect crooked politics and money to fix that little loop hole.
* * Beatles-Beatles (Score:3, Funny)
Gallant works as a programmer for a company that releases most of their products into the Free/Open software world and simply has a social conscience that extend beyond himself.
Goofus works very hard at finding quick and easy ways to make money with nothing productive being done.
Gallant knows the value of hard work combined with the end goal of making the world a better place to live and uses his work as a way of improving life for others. Anything that he benfits from is incidental and not the reason for working.
Goofus loathes REAL work and is always keeping his eyes open for scams like abuse of Google link ratings as opposed to actually making a product or providing a REAL service of any kind.
Gallant spends his free time trying to warn citizens of the internet of the various ways in which supposed "businesses" abuse internet resources to try and raise page ranking.
Horse Cart (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, if MS ever does fully release their current MSWord Document Format to to the public, my belief is that two things will happen:
1: It will become the default save format, and essentially require everyone back to the days of Word 95/97 to upgrade to the next Office suite giving MS lots of $$$ that the haven't been able to get otherwise with their bloatware releases of features almost nobody needs -- except to read documents from other people.
2: The moment XML Doc comes into use, MS will introduce Enhanced Document+ as their preferred format, complaining that they need to get new important features to the user as quickly as possible and that the standards process is too slow for this. Of course by the time that ED+ format is standardized and implmeneted by anyone besides MS (who didn't announce this to anyone until they had their fully debugged version rolling off the CD presses) MS will again be years ahead of the competition. They'll just wear down the other implementers on the basis of their larger bankroll to pay for new development, and this post will become an interesting historical curiosity under the I-Told-You-So department of Slashdot.
Re:Standard - oh my. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, we don't.
As the time flies, I'm getting more and more convinced that OSI is actually harming our cause. While RMS sometimes has bad ideas as well (GFDL, GPLv3), Free Software is the way to do. Not the collestion of look-but-not-touch-and-we-reserve-all-rights-to-s
Maybe we need to grow up (Score:5, Interesting)
Why should software be different than nuts and bolts? Large detailed standards are not a bad thing. Now, if you can show that ODF is poorly designed compared with Microsoft's format, then I will listen. From the review of the two formats on Groklaw, I am actually inclined to prefer ODF to Microsoft's Office XML. ODF uses XLink, rather than reinventing that wheel, and ODF allows for mixed content (text and tags within the same parent tag) just like (X)HTML.
Parent
Re:Isn't XML readable anyways? (Score:5, Informative)
Take a look at Groklaw's comparison of XML formats [groklaw.net] and tell me if you think MS's XML is human-readable! :o)
Parent
Re:Isn't XML readable anyways? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, and I'm not joking here, it looks a whole lot more human-readable than perl or regexps. And as long as it can be converted easily (I assume excellent ODFdocx converters to be available soon if not now), will the implementation details matter? The only thing that really matters is if Microsoft starts doing "embrace and extend" with undocumented and purposefully obfuscated elements or attribut
Re:Isn't XML readable anyways? (Score:5, Insightful)
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<legalnote>
<warning>This document scheme is patented, copyright protected and trademarked</warning>
<uspto>US1234567</uspto>
</legalnote>
<blob type="binary" encryption="proprietary 40-bit">
<key type="public" enc="hex">
e5e9fa1ba31ecd1ae84f75caaa474f3a663f05f4
bd30361aa855686bde0eacd7162fef6a25fe97bf
</key>
<data enc="hex">
2bb80d537b1da3e38bd30361aa855686bde0eacd
7162fef6a25fe97bf527a25bb1da3e38bd30361a
</data>
</blob>
<blob type="image" codec="proprietary">
<data enc="hex">
30361aa855686bde0eacd7162fef6a25fe97bf527a25b
2bb80d537b1da3e38bd30361aa855686bde0eacd30361
</data>
</blob>
Parent
Re:Isn't XML readable anyways? (Score:4, Interesting)
True, but you gave a bad example, as you were illustrating how embedded binary information can look incomprehensible, which is irrelevant.
XML can be made difficult to read through the use of meaningless tag names or attributes.
The point of XML is that it can be made easily human readable (and good XML should be) - in fact this was one of the original design considerations.
Parent
Re:Isn't XML readable anyways? (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but neither embedded binary information nor obfuscated tags are irrelevant since we are discussing whether opening up the XML formats will actually result in an open standard which can be implemented by competitors.
The point I tried to make is that there is a large number of tricks (binary data, links to external data in proprietary formats, patents, obfuscation, writing non-compliant documents, "extending" the standard, etc) which can be utilized to create non-interoperable file formats even if they are based on XML...creating a good and genuinely open XML format requires the will to do so...and somehow I have the feeling that the will of some parties is not that strong.
Parent
Re:Isn't XML readable anyways? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051125
I'll let you judge for yourself how good or bad it is:
MS XML />
</w:rPr>
<w:t>this is bold</w:t>
</w:r>
<w:r> <w:rPr> <w:b
OpenDocument
<text:span text:style-name="Strong_20_Emphasis"> this is bold </text:span>
XHTML
<b>this is bold</b>
Parent
Re:Isn't XML readable anyways? (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Patents/licenses.
Do Microsoft have any patents to any methods/techniques in the XML schemas? Patents seem to be granted on pretty much anything, nowadays (that's another discussion), but even if it's non-valid, open source-developers can rarely afford to either contest or license use of a patent.
If Microsoft makes a blanket license to use any patented method they might have claim on relating to the format, no questions asked, and with a right to sublicense, kudos to them. If not, it's not an open format.
There was also some technicalities regarding "a conforming implementation". Does this mean that you're not allowed to implement support for any extensions that are non-conforming to the specification? Are Microsoft the only ones allowed to do that? (Microsoft doesn't actually have a good track-record for following specifications - not even their own ones).
That leads us into point 2:
2) Is Microsoft itself going to conform to the specification, or are they going to embrace and extend their own formats? If they are, this means that the situation won't be much better than today, as we're forever stuck with reverse-engineering "the newest Microsoft Office formats". Making an XML specification itself changes nothing. The value in this XML specification coming from Microsoft, is that it promises interoperability with and long-term-archivability of documents written in Microsoft office, something that's been problematic up to now.
If this is just a "snapshot", however, something that some version of Microsoft office once used, but you can't be sure that *any* Microsoft Office-document can be opened with just implementing the specification, we gain nothing. Nothing at all. Then, it's just a fake bone, a PR-stunt, to keep off ODF competition.
ODF of course have the same problems, but at least that format comes from the open source world, which means that at least the open source implementations (that are likely to become the "reference implementations") can be studied to see what the hell they have changed and why they're not conforming.
- Vegard
Parent
Re:Isn't XML readable anyways? (Score:3, Funny)
>>1) Patents/licenses
>>2) Is Microsoft itself going to conform to the specification
>You're forgetting something
Point 3?
Re:Who? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, in fact, yes I have. That's how it was originally.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:best of both worlds (Score:3, Informative)
You can still have employees do nothing but a spefic format. If they have to switch it enough, then the users will switch office packages. And that issue, is why OO has the ability to choose what is the default format.
Re:Since when... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent