Microsoft has applied for patents that could prevent competing applications from processing documents created with the latest version of the software giant’s Office program.
Microsoft Seeks XML-related Patents
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
really…this is their stronghold, and they will guard with all their might. it angers me, but at the same time makes perfect business sense.
it angers me, but at the same time makes perfect business sense.
Of course it does. What do they have to gain by opening up the format to everybody and their grandmother?
Howdy
Honestly how can american companies play the legal system like this, XML is ment to be easily exchanged between multiple apps/clients/systems.
Why are they being allowed to patent such a thing when it is clearly ment to give us more freedom to exchange data, stuff like this makes me wonder if i should continue with Computer Science and play dodge the patent mine field.
Does the XML copyright holders have any legal clout to stop them issuing a patent on their IP?
I understand it as them wanting to stop OpenOffice and friends of opening their documents?
Well, soon people will become aware of that, and save files in other, free-for-all formats, like sxw, rtf, etc…
Holy Crap! There is actually an analysis firm dedicated to Microsoft!
From the article:
“Despite those moves toward openness, the patents could create a barrier to competing software, said Rob Helm, an analyst for research firm Directions on Microsoft.”
http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/
I’m an american and I hate MS and am doing everything I can to fight them. We will win eventually.
Big suprise here, you don’t protect a monopoly by giving away your IP. I’m suprised they didn’t patent it before office was released, seems a bit silly to do it afterwards.
I’m not all that happy about it but it is to be expected.
Dan
You will win what?
This is a free market. Just don’t use their products.
You hate MS? I guess you hate the thousands of people whose retirements and 401ks are invested in MS?
Just because something, “makes perfect business sense,” doesn’t mean it is the ethical thing to do, and sure as hell doesn’t make it acceptable.
Some people seem to have adopted that sense businesses are around to make money, that makes anything they do in their quest for more money inherently justified. When people take such a laissez faire attitude it’s no wonder beasts like Microsoft and the RIAA exist.
You really can’t blame Microsoft for trying, but demonstrating prior art for a word processor which stores its documents as XML is farily easy to do…
If these patents are granted (which wouldn’t be surprising considering the gross incompetance of the USPTO as of late), it’s highly unlikely they would hold up in court…
Microsoft didn’t invent XML. They didn’t invent ASCII or Unicode, and they didn’t ‘innovate’ the idea of wrapping text in HTML style tags.
Why should they be granted a patent for exporting Word text within XML tags? If they wanted to keep this proprietary they could have. They didn’t have to pretend they were doing something more open.
I don’t use Microsoft products anymore and this only justifies my correct choice.
While I understand people wanting to protect their IP…
I really hate to see anyone patent software.
Sooner or later, it will be the end of innovation in the software arena.
There is going to be a sea of lawsuits over software related patents very soon. Most of them will be aimed staight at the various distro’s of Linux, as soon as it appears someone is making money at it.
Going to be a very interesting battle to say the least.
“Just because something, “makes perfect business sense,” doesn’t mean it is the ethical thing to do”
Is linux ethical ? If China made TV and pushed it to the US market for free, what US gov. will do ?
Here is where software patents fail. Consider:
– Software is copyrightable. However, if you don’t copy the software, but rather, reverse-engineer it and make a compatible implementation, its 100% legally sanctioned. The law recognizes the necessity of competition, and allows reverse-engineering.
– If software is also patentable, the natural protection built into copyright law fails. If companies patent their technique as well, they can easily bypass prevent reverse-engineering for the purposes of compatibility.
You can have one, or you can have the other, but both together are a critical mistake. What other industry can file both for copyrights and patents? You can patent a new frobnitz widget, but you can’t copyright it. You can copyright a book, but you can’t patent it. Allowing software to do both just breaks the whole system!
PS> Anonymous, you are really getting on my nerves. Copying ideas is not stealing. It is the basis of our civilization. If scientists didn’t “copy” each others ideas and improve on them, we’d still be living in the dark ages. The US Constitution, which I hold in a lot higher regard than any book written thousands of years ago, says that information should be in the public domain. It allows for *limited* monopoly, to spur the creation of ideas, but only so that there are more ideas to go into the public domain. The 20 year term on patents and 28 year term on copyrights was devised centuries ago, when progress was much slower. In this age of extremely fast progress, these terms should be shortened, to ensure that ideas are still relevent when they enter the public domain.
They have the right to patent anything they invented, if the did not create the format or write the code, they will not be given the patent by the U.S. Patent office. To say MS is evil is silly, they just sell a product and want to see it continue making money. If you want what they sell for free then donate or join an open source software group. ie http://www.ReactOS.com, they are making a opensource NT clone.
Yeap, I hope these are signs to the mono developers.
If the believe in capitalism, like they claim to, they would do nothing. If China can sustainably make TVs for free, they have a comparative advantage in the manufacturing of TVs, and economic theory says that the US should just stop making TVs and switch to making things they are good at.
Microsoft is involved in a long drawn-out legal case over browser plugins with Eolas. If they had a patent on this, they would not have to worry about this. Microsoft supposedly has a patent on CSS, yet I haven’t heard of them suing anyone over this (http://slashdot.org/articles/99/02/04/169219.shtml).
What would you suggest Microsoft do? Unfortunately, defensive patent grabbing is a necessary part of corporate culture.
Most software patents are on IDEAS, not code implementations.
As many people may have the same idea, one company claiming 100% ownership via a software patent is actually stealing — from all the people with the same idea.
Software patents on ideas are morally wrong. You can protect a specific implementation of an idea, but not an idea.
Microsoft is an evil company and the world is right in its fight to destroy them.
Nobody has a right to “make money.” That’s a seriously delusional sense of entitlement there. Don’t try to redefine what the Constitution says! People have certain rights outlined in the Consitution. They have the right to create, and the right to try to sell their creations for money. But if they cannot make money doing that, well, tough nuggets. They certainly do not have the right to abuse the system in order to make money, and this qualifies as an abuse of the system. So does their monopoly status, and continual strong-arming of the industry.
It is not 1920 people! In the US, we have laws governing the economy. We have these laws because laissez-faire capitalism proved to be disasterous in the early 20th century. We have these laws because economists recognized (and have formal theories for) the fact that monopolies are very damaging to a free market system!
If the believe in capitalism, like they claim to, they would do nothing. If China can sustainably make TVs for free, they have a comparative advantage in the manufacturing of TVs, and economic theory says that the US should just stop making TVs and switch to making things they are good at.
But only to a certain degree, now TV manfactures in China are facing US anti-dumping charges.
Put it in another way, if you are doing for profit business, you can’t ask somebody do something without paying him, even the guy voluntared. Not only you have to pay him for any service he performed, but also you need to pay him at least the minimum wage. Anybody see there is the volunteer salvary in the oss model ?
“It is their idea, they have the right to protect from people who steal and cheat the system.
To survive and promote their products they need to protect the code….”
No it’s not, it is their implementation. Reading a file is not a patentable thing, the way you read it is. I certainly hope this patent doesn’t go through.
And W3C came up with using XML for documents LONG before Microsoft.
> They have the right to patent anything they invented…
> If you want what they sell for free…
They point is I don’t want what they invented, but I may need access to data or information that the USERS of their software created.
Microsoft’s action is to once again lock away CUSTOMER CREATED data, and then try to sell us all the key.
http://www.openoffice.org/
http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/index.html
http://www.lotus.com/products/smrtsuite.nsf/wPages/smartsuite?OpenD…
The whole point of this discussion is that Microsoft is attempting to keep those options from being valid competitors! Maintaining compatibility with other products is an acknowledge part of copyright law. Microsoft is trying to do an end-run on this by leveraging patent law!
I only mention it because while Microsoft can try to protect the sharing of their own formats, they cannot control the compatability between other vendors and if people were to purchase or use alternatives that are compatible with one another Microsoft would be protecting nothing.
Now of course the reality of things is that MS dominates that sector and the odds of people changing no matter what MS does is highly unlikely. I only put it out there as something to look at.
>” I don’t want what they invented”
If you don’t want it, don’t buy it. thats how capitalism works. Help open souce.
>”lock away CUSTOMER CREATED data”
If MS did not write it, they will not get the patent. Its just that simple. Parties can object and then the government decides who really should have that patent.
Yeah. Microsoft would never outsource…
http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/systems/0,39001153,39139020,00.htm
>>”lock away CUSTOMER CREATED data”
> If MS did not write it, they will not get the patent. Its just that simple.
> Parties can object and then the government decides who really should
> have that patent.
Totally missed the point. I’m outta here…
I always thought patents where used for some kind of creation or technological breakthru. How can they patent something based on XML? Isn’t the whole purpose of XML to do what Microsoft did with their products? Isn’t it analagous to patenting the layout of my website (which incidentally looks like a lot of other websites but I used different CSS tags)? If this goes thru, the patents office is really messed up.
This news is a huge boost to China’s IT market.
“But only to a certain degree, now TV manfactures in China are facing US anti-dumping charges.
Put it in another way, if you are doing for profit business, you can’t ask somebody do something without paying him, even the guy voluntared”
Wrong. The only laws that exist are that a) You can’t dump stuff in the US and not dump it everywhere else and b) You can’t be dumping with government support. An example of a) would be it would be illegal if Sony sold PS2 for $200 in the US but $800 in Japan. However, since they sold it for a loss everywhere, as did Microsoft, it was legal. An example of b) would be it would be illegal if Taiwan kept memory manufacturers in business while they dumped memory chips in the US by providing them income.
So, in the case of tv’s, the Chinese are free to bring however many tv’s they wants as long as a) they don’t sell them for more in other countries and b) the Chinese government is not the reason why they are in business.
I wonder if in the future, IBM will use their HUGE patent portfolio to foster linux and deny MS different types of technologies.
This is just another case of Microsoft and its Marketing/Legal machine taking advantage of patent officers that have no clue.
Looky here… OO 1.1 Writer document:
jbecker@gecko:~> file foo.sxw
foo.sxw: Zip archive data, at least v2.0 to extract
jbecker@gecko:~> unzip foo.sxw
Archive: foo.sxw
extracting: mimetype
inflating: content.xml
inflating: styles.xml
extracting: meta.xml
inflating: settings.xml
inflating: META-INF/manifest.xml
Cheers
Opening up document format is necessary to safeguard the freedom of consumers. To patent the way your store your document data inherently locks in users. But read my lips: I do not want to use your software, yet I need to communicate with people who do!
Just because something, “makes perfect business sense,” doesn’t mean it is the ethical thing to do, and sure as hell doesn’t make it acceptable.
Unless the patent MS is going for prevents OpenOffice and other word processors from opening up their own data files, then I really don’t see the problem. If MS wants to try and prevent competitors from reading/writing to file formats that MS created, where does the unethical part come in? I guess the entie OSS community simply expects MS to open up the file format and let everybody have at it for free, but what is in it for MS assuming they do that?
The USA could care less about a competitive IT industry or the customers rights and freedoms. It’s a dictatorship in the USA so companies that base their product line on Linux would be wise to leave the USA and begin to profit selling their product to the rest of the world. Linux beats MS Windows hands down, but Linux will not get a fair deal in the USA, so IBM shouldn’t wast any time in relocating to Germany or France or China, or anywhere outside of America.
Adam Smith must be rolling over in his grave.
| But read my lips: I do not want to use your software, yet I | need to communicate with people who do!
Use PDF man ! It works extremely well for exchanging files outside a workgroup
Thanks OpenOffice
They can patent all they want, I wont use .doc files or anything related of MS office anyway.
They are history.
People power _is_ winning out over their monopoly.
They are desperately painting themselves into a corner.
The end result of their out moded attempts at proprietary lock-in is that no one will be able to read their documents & so no one will use their products in the end.
“Honestly how can american companies play the legal system like this, XML is ment to be easily exchanged between multiple apps/clients/systems.”
The patents are being taken out in New Zealand and the EU. Nothing of the sort yet in the USA. Odd that and American company is playing the legal system of foriegn countries.
The unethical part of what Microsoft wants is that the user’s data is locked from people that the user chose to share their information with. It wouldn’t be such an issue if they were patenting a file format that contains Microsoft’s IP, not a user’s IP.
I thought you could only patent something which has not been publicly released, or does this rule not apply in the US? (confused)
People, people people. Read the application for the patent. They are not patenting XML or even their format. Just the method they are using for validating it. Big deal!
Please ignore the article, written by a paranoid, techno-incompete, attention grabbing journalist. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Please educate yourselves before reacting.
Here is the link to the application:
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&…
I’ve never quite understood the phobia about “lock-in” of Microsoft file formats. As long as you have the Copy and Paste commands, or the Save As command, you can move data from a Microsoft application to any other.
Sadly, those who bleat loudest about “lock-in” with Word are the zealots who rarely use it in the real world, and fail to understand even its most basic features.
“The US Constitution, which I hold in a lot higher regard than any book written thousands of years ago, says that information should be in the public domain.”
What book? The Bible?
If MS than ok, if not MS; than they should be put behind bars – with their Grandmother.
Specifically the Bible, because of the Anonymous guy who keeps bringing it up. The comment was a bit more general, though, because looking to any of the religious texts for economic theory is a pretty bad idea. I mean, usury is condemned in the Bible, but the entire system of investing in businesses is based upon it!
“I’ve never quite understood the phobia about “lock-in” of Microsoft file formats. As long as you have the Copy and Paste commands, or the Save As command, you can move data from a Microsoft application to any other.
Simple my company at work uses MS Office. At Home I use OpenOffice.org under Linux. Currently I can take MS .doc format documents created by me, or sent to me by my colleagues, home and work with them using OOo. Conversely I can create .doc format files using OOo at home and take them to work and open them using MS word. I can do this beacuse the OOo developers have reverse engineered the .doc format for computer compatibility. If this were prevented by patent restrictions for future MS document formats I would no longer be able to do this.
This is what I and many others object to. It is an attempt to impose a monopoly restriction impeding computer ineroperability, not to protect so-called “intellectual property”. Even if you accept the principle of patenting software (which I don’t) the patent wont stand up because of massive amounts of prior art in XML formats for documents (OOo and Abiword were using XML for their word processor documents long before MS).
The problem here is that nowadays that Patent offices will hand out patents which have no validity and it costs at least a milllion dollars to get one overturned in court. This is why we think it is unethical, immoral and should not be allowed for a company that is a convicted illegal monopoly.
Yes you must be confused.
You hear it don’t you? This patent thingy is what will cause the rest of the players to stop using XML, dream up some other transform language and there you have it…another senseless standard relegated to MS use only.
People are gonna get sick of this crap eventually and when will that time come? … when Mom can’t read her daughter’s email attachment.
“A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.” -Theodore Roosevelt
Do not underestimate the intelligent of ancient people. Our technology is still based upon their discoveries. Our economic and social lives are also based upon their rules. Go and find some wise and powerfull ruler as King Solomon or King David – you won’t find him.
There’s not a great deal of love for MS in the IT field in the States. IBM doesn’t need to move either, that’s a silly idea.
Where’s the reference to the New Zealand patent?
Microsoft is patenting stuff in NZ because they were fooled by some misdirection.
However, soon all will be clear. 2004 is the year that Microsoft’s charade will be exposed for the world to see. In ten years, Microsoft will be out of business.
Simple my company at work uses MS Office. At Home I use OpenOffice.org under Linux. Currently I can take MS .doc format documents created by me, or sent to me by my colleagues, home and work with them using OOo. Conversely I can create .doc format files using OOo at home and take them to work and open them using MS word. I can do this beacuse the OOo developers have reverse engineered the .doc format for computer compatibility. If this were prevented by patent restrictions for future MS document formats I would no longer be able to do this – This is what I and many others object to. It is an attempt to impose a monopoly restriction impeding computer ineroperability, not to protect so-called “intellectual property”
Good points chemical – its clearly an attempt to lock out competitors or atleast make things prohibitively difficult for them……
Microsoft didn’t invent XML. They didn’t invent ASCII or Unicode, and they didn’t ‘innovate’ the idea of wrapping text in HTML style tags.
Why should they be granted a patent for exporting Word text within XML tags? If they wanted to keep this proprietary they could have. They didn’t have to pretend they were doing something more open.
Easily done. They can claim that the schema used in the conversion is an algorithm and there for has to be protected via a patent.
The problem with Microsoft is the lack of “playing nice”, if the DOJ wanted to play tough, they should have created an independent trust which demanded that all past and future IP developed must be submitted to the independent trust for people to license the technologies free of charge. Any changes to these submitted technologies must be updated.
The netresult would have been the completely disclosure of the win32 API information. Source code wouldn’t necessarily need to be disclosed but mearly the information required to re-implement a compatible technology from scratch.
Soon all vodaphone customer won’t reach any other but people with a vodaphone account. Stuff all the rest.
Nokia will make it impossible to their customer to call anybody who owns a Siemens or Motorola or whatever…….
………
And we’ll have people claming:
but at the same time makes perfect business sense.
and
Of course it does. What do they have to gain by opening up the format to everybody and their grandmother?
What a free world!
I’m not underestimating the wisdom contained in the Bible. I’m quite well-versed in both the Bible and the Quran, because both play an important role in world culture. My point was that it is illogical for the Anonymous poster to keep bringing up the Bible in this discussion, without supporting his point logically. Most people don’t believe that something is true just because it is in the Bible, and in many cases (laws about usury, for example) modern thought (ex. the Constitution) has superceded ideas presented in the Bible.
“A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.” -Theodore Roosevelt
Well everyone has their flaws. These people however were not so kind.
“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.” -James Madison
“Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!” -John Adams
As some one cracks out the old bible we have the Bible Bashers of America unite behind a group of miss-interpreted quotations. Why is it EVERY time there is an argument, you can guarantee that there will be at least one American who will bring up the bible as if it was some sort of “infinite supply of wisdom”.
If there is one value I hope that is never adopted by the world, it Americas puritanical use of the bible to justify anything done. If it isn’t a general claiming that GWB was put in power by god, it is Bill Grahams son claiming that Islam is evil and it is the duty of every Christian to fight it.
For f**ck sake, this isn’t the forum to debate religion. Want to debate religion, join a group at groups.google.com and use their bandwidth to rant and rave about the bible.
I don’t see how anyone could misinterpret those quotes.
FYI, many Biblical scholars are pretty skeptical about 1-Corinthians and 2-Corinthians. There is some really fringe stuff in these sections about women.
Yeah, this is OT, but I’m kind of interested in this particular subject. Mod me down Eugenia
“I’d rather burn in hell than subscribe to any crap like that”
Maybe you can subscribe to msn.com and wave a burning pinguin-flag. you’ll have enough time to think about Linux on the desktop as well. Good luck
Just save in openoffice format and thus force others to d/load openoffice or a viewer for IT. I’m tired of M$ forcing everyone to have to have their product or a viewer for it turn the tables on the strategy.
“I’ve never quite understood the phobia about “lock-in” of Microsoft file formats. As long as you have the Copy and Paste commands, or the Save As command, you can move data from a Microsoft application to any other. ”
Yeah try opening a microsoft application in a non-microsoft operating system.
Yes, it is possible, but it doesn’t solve the problem, and the results aren’t often very good… and it doesn’t make any sense since ms applications would still be necessary. And not all the different saving formats keep all the data intact…
FYI, many Biblical scholars are pretty skeptical about 1-Corinthians and 2-Corinthians. There is some really fringe stuff in these sections about women.
Yeah, this is OT, but I’m kind of interested in this particular subject. Mod me down Eugenia
I’m sceptical of the whole thing. The Old Testament/Tora was only considered “word of god” 3000/4000BC, when the Greeks ruled over Israel. A Jewish philosopher concluded that because the Jewish people were gods chosen people, there for the deeds of its people were sacred, meaning, the Tora is the word of god. Until then, the
Old Testament/Tora was seen as nothing more than the story of the Israelites/Jews struggling against oppression and the thoughts and ideas of its people.
I am even more sceptical about Koran being that it was broken up and spread from one side of the Arabian Peninsula to the other, whilst parts of it were missing and replaced with “assumptions” of what the original text was based on other bits and pieces. Contradictions such as viewing lesbianism as nothing more than a naughty there was as homosexuality was seen as the gravest of sins. If it were truly the word of god, there would be a straight down condemnation or tolerance, there wouldn’t be this contradiction that exists.
What does religion have to do is OS? Nothing, dang enough already. If your read the bible you will hardly see anything about economics except for the “you dont work, you dont eat” addage. Geez people. This is making me sick, we’re supposed to be commenting on MS’s latest patent people, which it is my belief could stiffle competition if used in the wrong way.
OOo is to big a thread to MS. Take away Office from MS and they loose their best cash cow. And hey, OOo is a real thread and not only because it’s free but because it is very usable and stable.
I bet my bottom dollar that soon, with the release of Longhorn, you won’t be able to install OOo for Win anymore.
Remember DR-DOS? Suddenly Win3.1 wouldn’t run on top of it.
nothing new under the ms sun
OOo is to big a thread to MS. Take away Office from MS and they loose their best cash cow. And hey, OOo is a real thread and not only because it’s free but because it is very usable and stable.
I think more to the point, its “good enough”. Most people would love to own a nice BWN with leather seats, top notch stereo, climate control but the reality is, it is just a car. When you boil down to it, the question asked is, “what can I afford” and “what will get my from A to B with minimum cost and hassle” and for most people, a Mazda or Hyundai will do the job quite nicely.
Same thing with software. Most people drool over Office then they realise that they don’t actually need it and can do the same things using a cheap piece of software, not because it is better but because it is priced right and it is “good enough” for the job.
I definitely do not think that either is the word of God, and consider the traditional interpretation of the Quran as the literal word of God to be a mistake that limits the evolution of the religion. There are definitely lots of contradictions and inconsistencies within both books. For example, the views on women presented in al-Baqarah and an-Nisa are much more conservative than those presented in most of the rest of the book, especially al-Imran. But my point is that in order to understand contemporary religion, one must look at these books and separate the passages that people still consider relevent today from the passages that people do not consider relevent today. My point was that a lot of mainstream religious scholars consider some of the statements in 1-Corinthians and 2-Corinthians to be outmoded, especially their statements about women.
When companies went after ms for ideas like imbedding multimedia in a browser window or sending streaming media, where were the people saying the patents are wrong? MS is taking hits on the patent mine field so they are going to play the game. The point of a patent is to protect an original idea so that you can make money from it. The software patent game is to
1) Patent for the most general idea you can get past the patent office
2) Sit on it till someone uses it
3) Sue them for money.
There is a company suing register.com for the concept of having [email protected] email and user.domain.com URL. That idea is obvious and there are several people using it, but someone actually hold a patent on the idea.
I stated it in half a sentence above but the patent filed says the same thing in 8 pages of confusing crap designed to get it past the patent office.
The patent office needs to start tossing some of this stuff out the door.
I don’t know what people you were listening to, but when the Eolas story broke, a lot of Slashdot people found themselves rooting for Microsoft. Tech people definately seem to hate software patents in general more than they hate Microsoft.
That’s Capitalism, don’t like it, move to, well China.
$
Actually, capitalism detests monopolies. Patents, by definition, grant monopolies. The Founding Fathers believed that encouraging invention was worth subverting the free market, for a limited time. And patents are indeed perfectly valid, just not in the software industry.
But there is also the fact that XML was put through the standardisation process, and the goal of that standardisation process was to come up with an open derivative of HTML that could be used for precisely such a purpose.
To take part in such a standardisation process and then turn around and attempt to patent it, is in violation of the usual patent process. Patents in common law, if I remember correctly, are to reward the development of a
unique proprietary product which has been developed behind closed doors – ie, not in the open cut-and-thrust of the standardisation process – by awarding the developers of such a product a legally-enforceable monopoly on its
manufacture for a period of time in which the manufacturer has a reasonable chance of recouping the losses involved in its development, and being able to write them down as investment expenses, repaid by the product’s sales. It is
also to ensure that the processes concerned, the design developments, etc, have a chance to percolate outwards via licenses, etc, until it becomes standard knowledge and the industry concerned develops and improves. (This is information that I got when I enquired about patenting an electronic guitar pickup design in 1992 – I expected it to be common knowledge. Evidentally not.)
Microsoft fails that test on several counts – firstly, XML is a standard, not a product, and as such, has _NOT_ been developed behind closed doors, but out in the open. Why should IBM, SUN, etc, be expected to subsidize Microsoft’s
extravagances?
Secondly, patenting something like that goes against the grain. Patents are to ensure that a valuable technological improvement gets disseminated broadly
while repaying its developers for developing it and for making it widely available. If something has been developed in a broad standards-making process, then it has already been disseminated broadly, it is hardly a proprietary secret in urgent need of defending against rivals.
Thirdly, Microsoft is intending to use this as a rod to beat Linux, OpenOffice.org, etc. This again goes against the grain of patents, which are to reward an inventor for allowing rivals to see and make use of his invention while enforcing his rights on it, not for him to punish rivals. As such it falls under the area of anti-competition laws, misleading advertising, etc.
Where’s the reference to the New Zealand patent?
Microsoft is patenting stuff in NZ because they were fooled by some misdirection.
Coming right up! You want Freedom Fries with that?
http://www.nzoss.org.nz/portal/modules.php?name=News&file=article&s…
Rayiner Hashem: It is not 1920 people! In the US, we have laws governing the economy. We have these laws because laissez-faire capitalism proved to be disasterous in the early 20th century. We have these laws because economists recognized (and have formal theories for) the fact that monopolies are very damaging to a free market system!
Wait, since when 20th Century America was a laissez-faire economy?
1) The feds still had plenty of regulation on most sectors of economy, quite unlike laissez-faire.
2) And even if America was a laissez-faire economy, the first half of the 20th century was marred with humankind’s two biggest wars – certainly you can’t blame laissez-faire’s poor performance under those times.
3) And the 1930s Great Depression proves that America wasn’t an laissez-faire economy at that time; the Herbert Hoover administration is pretty much the people responsible for it (i.e. their tariffs, for example). The circumstances leading up to the Black Thursday (where the stock market crashed) has the government hand all over it.
If anything, it is the *lack* of laissez-faire capitalism that amplified the Great Depression.
America was closest towards laissez-faire capitalism in the 19th century where regulation was close to non-existance and if there were regulation, it was normally at state level. But then again, that century was marred with disporpotionate civil rights (if you’re white and male and middle class, your rights is guarenteed; but if black, female and poor, a sad thing but you don’t have many rights).
If software patents and copyrights is to stay, its term should be short, like a year or two, allowing better competition. But most of the software patents as it is today is described in non-technical lawyer’s language, where it could imply towards something completely unrelated to the original invention. USPTO however is the one always at fault here; seemingly refusing to investigate whether an invention deserves a patent or not.
Rayiner: I mean, usury is condemned in the Bible, but the entire system of investing in businesses is based upon it!
Actually, usury is regulated by the Bible, not banned. It was the Catholic Church that banned it, but then again, they banned a lot of things not banned in the Bible. And theorectically, only Jews are under such regulation; Christians (as in Acts) only need to follow four simple rules (Don’t pray to other Gods, don’t eat food offered to other gods, don’t consume blood, abstain from sexual immorality).
Actually, capitalism detests monopolies. Patents, by definition, grant monopolies. The Founding Fathers believed that encouraging invention was worth subverting the free market, for a limited time. And patents are indeed perfectly valid, just not in the software industry.
Actually, by defination, capitalism detests government-sponsored and government-enforced monopolies; patents not being one of them (because it is up to the patent holder to enforce it or to leave it alone, or to license it). Capitalism, again, by defination, gives you monopoly over your property. See Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nation for example.
Now, the issue whether ideas are property of a person or not – that is a thorny issue. The founding fathers obviously thought it was but forsaw the effects of unlimited patents with no time-limit. Personally, I think certain ideas that are specific and required a lot of research deserves a patent while broad, unimaginative ideas don’t deserve them.
Anounymous: IBM should move it’s entire operations out of the USA and pursue Linux. I would rather buy from China than the USA.
You rather buy from a massively corrupt, totalitarian police state, rather from USA? Sorry, but your logic just doesn’t seem to compute. Besides, in China, many sectors have government-enforced monopolies – unlike in the USA.
Q: Opening up document format is necessary to safeguard the freedom of consumers. To patent the way your store your document data inherently locks in users. But read my lips: I do not want to use your software, yet I need to communicate with people who do!
Guess what? If Microsoft completely opens up its format – there still won’t be 100% perfect compatiblity with other competitors. Take for example, Microsoft’s fastest growing competitor – StarOffice. Compare the formating feature set between StarOffice and Microsoft Office. You would find many features in Office that aren’t available in StarOffice and you would find some features in StarOffice not available in Office.
In other words, if you use any of those features, there ain’t any compatiblity.
Besides, Office allows for third-party plugins to provide support for third party formats – why not Sun just create such a plugin, and provide it as a free download? When you send a spreadsheet, for example, to Joe Shmuck, all he have to do is to download a nice small plugin and he not only can open the file, but can save in it too. As more people uses StarOffice formats, the more prevelent it would get. Soon, Microsoft (like today with PDFs) would be forced to provide built-in support in a future version.
Anonymous: The USA could care less about a competitive IT industry or the customers rights and freedoms. It’s a dictatorship in the USA so companies that base their product line on Linux would be wise to leave the USA and begin to profit selling their product to the rest of the world.
Such a nice dictatorship, where there is actually fair elections, system check and balances, and two competing parties within a two-party system, an somewhat independent judiciary, etc. – that’s one hell of a dictatorship. Probably the most open dictatorship in the history of mankind. And you want profitable companies to move to China where they have to bribe to succeed?
The unethical part of what Microsoft wants is that the user’s data is locked from people that the user chose to share their information with. It wouldn’t be such an issue if they were patenting a file format that contains Microsoft’s IP, not a user’s IP.
Reading the article up there – they aren’t patenting their users’ IP. I can still use *.doc and all my stuff in it would still be *my* IP. Don’t confuse format lockdown with this. Besides, if I want to share my IP with a bunch of other people using Office’s competitors, I can save in RTF.
chemicalscum: Even if you accept the principle of patenting software (which I don’t) the patent wont stand up because of massive amounts of prior art in XML formats for documents (OOo and Abiword were using XML for their word processor documents long before MS).
If you read the patent, prior art doesn’t matter – they aren’t patenting XML. They are patenting the validation process used in Office 11/2003. Unless you can find someone else that have prior art is using similar techniques, I think the patent can sand up.
Besides, Microsoft has yet to enforce any of its previous patents within this market, including those relating to Microsoft’s former format, so I doubt they would change that anytime soon. And when they do, it is probably when StarOffice/OOo already have a bug chunk of market share where it can stand on its own without compatibility with Microsoft.
mythought: Soon all vodaphone customer won’t reach any other but people with a vodaphone account. Stuff all the rest.
Nokia will make it impossible to their customer to call anybody who owns a Siemens or Motorola or whatever…….
For the first, if vodaphone does that, they would loose an significant money maker – inter-network calls (which cost more to the customer). And Nokia would instantly loose its market as telcos would balk at upgrading their networks to be Nokia-compatible, and start promoting Nokia’s competitors. In either case, it makes very little business sense.
lanjoe9: Yeah try opening a microsoft application in a non-microsoft operating system.
Basic Wine out of the box can run Microsoft viewers pretty well. The big problem with Wine out of the box is that you can’t copy and paste between KDE/GNOME and Wine apps.
Wesley Parish: Microsoft fails that test on several counts – firstly, XML is a standard, not a product, and as such, has _NOT_ been developed behind closed doors, but out in the open.
Again, read Microsoft’s patent – they aren’t patenting XML. They are patenting their validation process that it is pretty much propreitary already.
Because the rest of my family doesn’t like OOo I had to install MS Office as well.
I am using both and find MS Office to be more buggy than OOo.
I had to re- install MS Office three time ’cause Word took more than 25 sec. to load, whereas Excel fired up instantly.
Functuonality wise I do not see many differences – or let me put it this way – It is hard for MS to justify their price tag of nearly 300 AUD for the student/teacher version.
Apart from that I don’t like MS’s politics of telling me what Appl. to use for saving and distributing my data.
Does Optus, Telstra or Vodaphone put any restrictions on you on who you can call?
No matter what provider you are using, you still can communicate with whoever using your provider’s competition.
Same with the phones and other devises.
“Capitalism, again, by defination, gives you monopoly over your property. See Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nation for example. ”
Capitalism is a mere fancy word for saying that you are perfectly able to create a dictatorship over people in one way or another.
I have no problems with making money and doing business, but there are limits in how far you can take this. Freedom must be safeguarded at all times.
In fact, I have the freedom not to use the crappy .doc,.xls … formats. I can force my clients with whom I do business to save all their documents in plain god forsaken text!
Howdy
I can not recall who said something along these lines (and i`m to lazy to find them :p) but this would open such a can of worms for everyone involved, I do not know if there is a precedent already of such a thing but could you imagine this stretching to SQL schemas etc !?
A DB admin could sue someone for simmilar table names!
Ok maybe this is a little to far but seems to be alot of insane patents and law suits these days so you can never rule anything stupid out.
Now if they patented ONE way of validating or processing a previously specified (or unspecified) schema then this IS reasonable but to say you cannot obtain information from an XML document using one of the many XML parsers just because it was formed with their schema is so wrong i don`t want to even contemplate it.
The formating of such information if included as XML elements is STILL just information in XML format so AFAICS this should not be subject to patents or lockout either.
NOTE: All i have said is in relation to standard XML documents (eg UTF-8) not some strange binary equivalent.
Seems like the world is going to hell and i`m in a row boat with a rubber duck for saftey
Because the rest of my family doesn’t like OOo I had to install MS Office as well.
I am using both and find MS Office to be more buggy than OOo.
I had to re- install MS Office three time ’cause Word took more than 25 sec. to load, whereas Excel fired up instantly.
Functuonality wise I do not see many differences – or let me put it this way – It is hard for MS to justify their price tag of nearly 300 AUD for the student/teacher version.
Funny. Everytime I use OpenOffice.org, I come out thinking that it is far more buggier than MS Office (currently using Office XP). In addition to that, I come out feeling that MS Office is much more polished (even more so with Office 2003). The last I used OpenOffice.org was with version 1.1, while a huge improvement, is nontheless much slower than MS Office, and unlike MS Office, crashed on me a few times.
Besides, functionality wise, OpenOffice.org barely supports macros, which my father, and to the lesser extend, me, used frequently. That’s a huge functionality bonus for me (and my family, actually). In addition to that, I’m quite sure without Smarttags, my productivity would be affected, even a slightly bit. Most importantly, its spell checker stinks the high heavens; and there isn’t any third party Malay spell-checker for OpenOffice.org.
Impress is the part I hate the most; PowerPoint is significantly better than it. It’s trasitions and special effects look jagged and unprofessional, and sometimes, not quite on time. Managing a Impress slideshow itself is a pain – you can have more than one slideshow open at a time (with MS Office, once you put up a presentation, Alt-Tab back into PowerPoint, open another presentation, and do the same; and shift between presentations using Alt-Tab). (Personally too, PowerPoint slacks behind Keynote is many areas, but I don’t have a Mac)
So for me, spending that kind of money on MS Office seems worth it. If you (and others) don’t feel it is worth it compared with altenatives, don’t use it. Don’t waste your money on it. But don’t play it as if the rest of us have no choice and we are mindless sheeps following a dictorian monopoly.
Does Optus, Telstra or Vodaphone put any restrictions on you on who you can call?
No matter what provider you are using, you still can communicate with whoever using your provider’s competition.
Do Optus, Telstra and Vodaphone charge a different fee for inter-network calls? And network companies make a lot of money from inter-network calls. I recently moved to another mobile provider because most of my friends are using it – I cut my telco bill by at least half, while using the services much more.
Q: Capitalism is a mere fancy word for saying that you are perfectly able to create a dictatorship over people in one way or another.
I just don’t see any logic in this. If the government is largely separated from economics – how would that create a dictatorship?
Q: I have no problems with making money and doing business, but there are limits in how far you can take this. Freedom must be safeguarded at all times.
That’s the use of the government, to safeguard the people’s civil liberties. The government is there to prevent corporations from acting like a street gang, forcing customers to use their products and services.
Q: In fact, I have the freedom not to use the crappy .doc,.xls … formats. I can force my clients with whom I do business to save all their documents in plain god forsaken text!
Precisely my point. I have the freedom not to use Microsoft’s formats, nobody’s forcing me to use it. Of course, I use it because I’m using Office, but as long as I have the right to use another format, that’s capitalism.
Very well said!
You’re life has to be really boring! Humans naturally fantasize about what they can’t understand. Yes, everybody knows that the tooth fairy & friends really don’t exist, but children like to imagine them. It’s just a matter of happiness…
Not everybody lives in a “gray” world like yourself!
The current administration in the USA is against Linux, they would rather support a monopoly and a dictator because that dictator (Microsoft) has a lot of money right now. The computer industry is not stable, never mind Windows not being stable. All corporations other than Microsoft would do well to get out of that country, the USA, because most of the opportunities are in areas like China and Asia. If the USA wants to support only their monopoly than let them, but that means get out of there, it’s the last place that any IT vendor wants to be.
Let the people of the USA have their monopoly and nothing else, in their own country, but free the rest of the world by developing a real platform, an open and accessible project that is responsible to the users, rather than a closed vendor product which leads the users in circles.
“So for me, spending that kind of money on MS Office seems worth it. If you (and others) don’t feel it is worth it compared with altenatives, don’t use it.
MS Office is a great Office suite – could be cheaper though; especially for students
“Don’t waste your money on it. But don’t play it as if the rest of us have no choice and we are mindless sheeps following a dictorian monopoly.”
Far from me! Recently I was asked to re-send a document in word format I originally sent in pdf. That was annoying, to say the least.
But yes, use Office 2003, if you wish – I use it too from time to time and I must admit that it has some features I miss in OOo. But that’s also the case the other way round.
BTW, the best Office suit on the market is CHOICE
” Q: Capitalism is a mere fancy word for saying that you are perfectly able to create a dictatorship over people in one way or another.
I just don’t see any logic in this. If the government is largely separated from economics – how would that create a dictatorship? ”
You are taken the notion of a “dictatorship” to literally. I was referring to any sort of oppressive entity forcing people to comply. This is what a dictatorship is in my view, not necessarely a nations government. It can be said the M$ is pretty much a global “government” in IT computers days.
M$ has been able to grow into a a monopoly virtually “dictating” the IT industry globally.
I’m just so through with this pile of crap. Bah!
Unfortunately in the real world it is very hard to avoid MS Word documents if people in your company keep sending them as attachments in email.
I had procmail setup to reject MS Word documents and send back a response about the problems of using proprietery file formats. Most people would then send it back in clear text or PDF.
A few people however got annoyed and got onto my PHB. He then ordered my to remove this automated response by COB or face the consequences.
The problem is that when a monopoly exists there is no choice because competition is not able to enter the industry. Since Microsoft became a monopoly a very drastic measure had to be taken in order to even try to compete, and that was free software. It’s the only way to challenge a monopoly is to offer a free alternative, however since the monopolies product is so widely distributed, and because of the nature of this technology which creates learning dependencies, the monopoly is able to use harmful means such as software patents in order to prevent the free alternative from entering the market and reaching an audience. Linux is not just a free platform any more, it is being pushed as a product by some vendors, and it’s a high quality offering, however the industry is a real mess, because a monopoly was able to get so far along. It appears that a great deal of damage is going to occur as well, during the process of creating a competitive industry. Strangely however, due to this ugly monopoly, a beautiful thing was created, and that is open source technology because it is controlled by the people, yet we do not know how to deliver it effectively this way because all of our knowledge is based on a closed model.
I’ve heard people who use MS Windows in their business say that ‘nobody likes Microsoft’ but for some reason or another they use it in order to fit in, but I don’t know of many people at all who say that they love Microsoft. Yet I can say that I love Linux, and it seems that many Linux users also love Linux. There is no victory without freedom.
“Unfortunately in the real world it is very hard to avoid MS Word documents if people in your company keep sending them as attachments in email. ”
Indeed. But then again, what is the use of a Word file if I don’t need to modify that file? A PDF or parsing XML will do fine.
In case I would need to modify the file, then an open source implementation such as OpenOffice documents is *the* solution. One can just do “unzip whatever.sxw” and see the xml files. Different Office packages can then implement XML parsers that extract the info they need.
Why should start refusing MS centric documents on a global scale: “Please attach PDF and/or XML only.”
All of this Linux vs. Microsoft is alway reduced to politics and nationalism. Resentment of the USA and thier culture is what alot of this based on.
Do you know why US culture is so pervasive across the planet? It is because our culture is a hybrid of all the people cultures that have come to the United States. Get used to it. As the world gets smaller, due to communications, the entire planet is going to come to resemble US culture, because US culture is a global culture.
All of this Linux vs. Microsoft is alway reduced to politics and nationalism. Resentment of the USA and thier culture is what alot of this based on.
I fail to see why you link the Linux vs. MS debate with resentment of the USA and its culture.
I have no such resentment, really. Suppose MS would not have been American, then my feelings towards its global dominance would remain, regardless.
I know that anybody who thinks that Microsoft is trying to control the way others will access to XML documents are pure idiot Average Joes. Why? Cause they can’t think.
Microsoft lost a patent suit from Eolas just recently. They invented the whole thing, but because they didn’t apply for a patent they lost, although patent is not valid, nobody in the jury or the judge himself saw this fact.
Patenting your own inventions is pretty normal. When open source idiots cheer up to Eoalas ruling, why the hell do you expect Microsoft not to patent their own inventions, methods. This doesn’t mean that they will enforce the patents. Patents are normally used by big companies to protect themselves, not to harm others. But in the future if and Microsoft loses big market share, well then you can start to worry about these patents. But now, claiming that Microsoft is evil is not only stupid but actually shows that the only evil is the one who rants Microsoft and tries to spread FUD and lies about it.
Btw, someobody has to check out the validity of the news, cause it comes from News.com.
Anonymous: You’re life has to be really boring! Humans naturally fantasize about what they can’t understand. Yes, everybody knows that the tooth fairy & friends really don’t exist, but children like to imagine them. It’s just a matter of happiness…
Not everybody lives in a “gray” world like yourself!
You can neither prove that God doesn’t exist, or prove it does, but in any case – what does religion have to do with this discussion on Microsoft’s latest patent filing?
The current administration in the USA is against Linux, they would rather support a monopoly and a dictator because that dictator (Microsoft) has a lot of money right now.
The current administration is neither pro-Linux or anti-Linux. NSA, for example, uses Linux a lot. But have they ever legislated against Linux? Have they banned Linux is the public sector? Is Linux barred from fair competition with Microsoft? In all cases, nope. They certainly prefer anti-trust laws not applied on Microsoft – but what that’s gotta do with Linux?
The computer industry is not stable, never mind Windows not being stable.
Funny. While I won’t say that Windows is just as stable or more stable than Linux, but I never had any stability problems with Windows XP. But who is the government to decide what is good and what is bad? Microsoft have made great strides in increasing not only stability, but also security, to its operating system so it wouldn’t loose its market – why should the US government stop them?
All corporations other than Microsoft would do well to get out of that country, the USA, because most of the opportunities are in areas like China and Asia.
I do agree there are many opportunity in China and Asia, but unless China completely reforms itself, its economy would be no more bigger and far more inferior to America’s economy. And the same goes to most Asian economies. The economy I’m most hopeful for is India; whose development is more spread out and would continue to be that way for some time. They may not grow as fast as China, but they grow much better than China. Probably in the future, India would be the world’s new America.
If the USA wants to support only their monopoly than let them, but that means get out of there, it’s the last place that any IT vendor wants to be.
Funny, why do you say that? Can you back it up with sound economic studies, proper study on the system of regulation, etc.? Personally, I would suggest that IT vendors would be fleeing Europe, instead of America, now. You make it sound that everyone in USA is forced to use Microsoft. Heck, Linus Torvalds and RMS both live in the US and both have no plans on leaving (especially for RMS is Kucinich for some reason becomes the next president).
MS Office is a great Office suite – could be cheaper though; especially for students
I disagree. Show me a profitable company selling a competing product that have almost a similar feature set as Office, yet turning in the profits, and I would agree with you.
Far from me! Recently I was asked to re-send a document in word format I originally sent in pdf. That was annoying, to say the least.
I’m not a big fan of PDFs – you can edit it and send it back with the changes; for example. When I was using OpenOffice.org, I sent my documents in RTF. Didn’t contain much special formating, certainly no extra nice features, but it conveys information well enough.
Personally, I see a huge market opportunity for Sun. If they would make a third-party pluggin for Microsoft Office that allows it to save in their format, and another small-sized no-frills viewer for their formats, while courting with Corel (Microsoft’s current biggest competitor in terms of market share), they would slowly chip away users from using Office’s formats.
Anonymous: That’s a tragedy because these developers for the Linux community are honest and credible and entertaining.
Wait, you are asking that US ammends its constitution so it wouldn’t give SCO a fair day in court just because the good guys are entertaining? LOL.
Anonymous: It’s hard to imagine why slime like the SCO and Microsoft get away with their corruption, and are supported by news organizatons like CNN which is supposed to be a creditable news organization, but it’s not.
Let no one catch me calling any news organization credible, but since when was CNN pro-Microsoft? Remember – CNN’s bosses up there in AOL Time Warner are Microsoft’s arch-enemies.
Q: M$ has been able to grow into a a monopoly virtually “dictating” the IT industry globally.
Microsoft certainly doesn’t dictate the IT industry the same way Saddam Hussein dictate Iraq, or Mao Zedong dictated China, or Fidel Castro dictate Cuba. Anytime I want, I can totally stop using Microsoft. Sure, my productivity would plummet, I would have less fun using my computer – but still I can at anytime I wish to stop using Microsoft.
And as long I have that right, this isn’t a dictatorship. It is an extremely tilted democracy that would fix itself in due time (Japan started off pretty much with one party controlling everything, now it is moving towards a two-party system without any massive artificial changes, for example).
Joe Spanner: A few people however got annoyed and got onto my PHB. He then ordered my to remove this automated response by COB or face the consequences.
When you run your company, you can do whatever you want. But I doubt your bosses appreciate you blocking Word documents merely on philosophical reasons; especially when it seems that they already paid for it.
Anonymous: The problem is that when a monopoly exists there is no choice because competition is not able to enter the industry.
Can you prove that a good competitor can’t enter the field as it is today without drastic meassures? I can. I’m willing to bet that within 2 decades, Linux would have broken Microsoft’s (legally defined) monopoly. Why? More and more people aren’t willing to justify the cost of using Windows, and they can use Linux.
Anonymous: […]the monopoly is able to use harmful means such as software patents in order to prevent the free alternative from entering the market and reaching an audience.
The only time Microsoft used patents to threaten open source software was some time ago during Samba. Their restrictions? No copyleft licenses when you want to use their patent. Samba’s reply? That the patent only applies for Windows-like operating systems. Looking at their massively large software patent portfolio, they could have threaten open source competitors from gaining any ground. They didn’t. I don’t see any proof that they will in due time.
Anonymous: but I don’t know of many people at all who say that they love Microsoft.
I love Microsoft. I admire Bill Gates and his “cronies” business sense and agility. I’m not ashame to say it. So what if I’m not in the “many people”?
Q: I fail to see why you link the Linux vs. MS debate with resentment of the USA and its culture.
I think that was refering to the numerous comments by Mr. Anonymous (mainly (IP: —.cg.shawcable.net))
but still I can at anytime I wish to stop using Microsoft.
Dude, wake up. Yes, technically you can, but you will find yourself in a difficult position if your are heavily communicating and exchanging documents with people who use M$-centric software. In the real world, some people will put there jobs on the line if they refuse M$ documents . Just read “Avoid MS Products” post above.
The fact remains is that M$ is the least compatible with other software products and has no intention to change this: it is the minority that has to put up with this nonsense.
Like someone posted above, suppose all Nokia phones are being limited to communicate only with Nokia phones from now on. Get the darn picture?
but still I can at anytime I wish to stop using Microsoft.
Dude, wake up. Yes, technically you can, but you will find yourself in a difficult position if your are heavily communicating and exchanging documents with people who use M$-centric software. In the real world, some people will put there jobs on the line if they refuse M$ documents . Just read “Avoid MS Products” post above.
The fact remains is that M$ is the least compatible with other software products and has no intention to change this: it is the minority that has to put up with this nonsense.
Like someone posted above, suppose all Nokia phones are being limited to communicate only with Nokia phones from now on. Get the darn picture?
Microsoft make a good office product.
Its absurdly huge but you get far more than you need or want for the money. Why they think INTEROPERABILITY is a bad thing is beyond me.
You would think that their customers would find access to the document format useful.
M$ are always defending this Market which they TOTALLY OWN.
It annoys them that some tiny percentage of users dont use Word.
Can you imagine a world where 95% of cars where fords but ford kept going for the last 5% as if nothing else mattered?
I think that M$ are greedy and they put their own interest way before their customers. This will be a mistake in the long run and may one day be their undoing.