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.
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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:2006-04-21
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.
Erm, I think you are confusing us with Microsoft. OSS fundies don't "co-opt" or "steal" anything, let alone "call it something else"; the utter failure of the SCO suit so far has proved that, and the case hasn't even gone to trial yet.
MS, on the other hand, "co-opted and stole" Kerberos, LDAP and the TCP/IP suite, calling the second of the three "co-opted" products "Active Directory".
Edited 2006-12-05 20:48
Member since:
2006-02-01
Because OpenXML is encumbered with patents.