Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 4th Dec 2006 22:26 UTC
The first fruit of the recently announced Novell/Microsoft interoperability agreement arrived on Dec. 4, with Novell's announcement that its version of the OpenOffice productivity suite will now support the Microsoft Office Open XML format. The release candidate of Novell's modified version of OpenOffice.org 2.02 is now available for Windows for free download by registered Novell users.
Thread beginning with comment 188059
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-02-01
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-01-06
That's FUD. The license specifically contains a Covenant Not to Sue. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenXML#Licensing for details.
The only ones who have to worry about OpenXML are OSS folks who would want to co-opt the format by stealing it and calling the derivative something else. The patent provision keeps that from happening.
Member since:
2005-12-02
"Of course, those who believe that OpenXML is a truly free format suitable for use without having to pay Microsoft tax are seriously misguided, but that's another issue entirely."
Well, since it is, and that is verified since the full implementation spec is available, free of charge, to anyone who wants it. It is as open as PDF is. So why would anyone pay Microsoft to implement this?