Microsoft Partially Opens Proprietary XML Format 369
eschasi writes "Groklaw has an article up
reporting that Microsoft
is going to open up their XML representation of the DOC format in response to Massachusetts' demand for
open formats. According to Groklaw there are some interesting caveats involved in the move. From the license: 'We are acknowledging that end users who merely open and read government documents that are saved as Office XML files within software programs will not violate the license'. While opening up the format even partially is a good idea, it's still a far cry from folks being able to write programs that create DOC-compatible files."
Re:ZONK DELETED A STORY! (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Fully off topic, but... (Score:3, Informative)
-Jesse
Re:What Open (Score:4, Informative)
If MSFT can't close the document format and any program can correctly read/write documents in the way they were intended what advantage does MSFT have.
That's why MSFT doesn't want this and everyone else does.
Re:DOC format question (Score:1, Informative)
I believe the licensing for Word forbids you from opening the files it creates in anything other than Word. I'm not certain though, having never read it myself. Also, MS has some bogus patents on their .doc format and we all know how many years they can tie things up in the courts for. Mass. probably does not have the money to fight a court battle against MS.
Re:What Open (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft has simply left this alone because OO.o and the others aren't yet a threat. If they ever become one, you'll see the floodgates open.
Re:XML (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with the MS implementation as I have understood it is Microsoft has used xml as transport for their proprietary DOC format, not defined their DOC structure in xml. There's a difference here. The former being the case, yes, you can get to the xml and "see" the DOC, but it is just an ascii encoded binary... so, you really get nothing more than the old proprietary stuff, AND an extra layer of obfuscation! Hardly what xml was supposed to be about.
Re:I'll never understand some arguments (Score:1, Informative)
What kind of anti-capitalist are you ?
DMCA does not ban Reverse Engineering! (Score:5, Informative)
Source, The text of the DMCA [loc.gov], Chapter 12, Section 1201.f (find within page for "reverse engineering")
Still not GPL compatible (Score:2, Informative)
Also, any software that implements this is violating the spirit of the GPL. The license explicitly restricts use of the patents to reading and writing MS documents. Noone may take such an application and modify it to make their own XML document format.
- krafty
Re:XML (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Opening? (Score:3, Informative)
Q. Are the licenses that Microsoft offers under the Open and Royalty-Free Office 2003 XML Reference Schema program perpetual in nature?
A. Yes. The licenses for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas are perpetual. There is no term limit on the licenses.
Q. Can the licenses for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas be used by open source developers?
A. Yes. Open source developers who wish to participate in a community development project can enter into the agreements and then work in a collaborative fashion on development of a program or programs.
Q. Can I distribute a program that can read and/or write files that support the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas in source code form?
A. Yes. You can distribute your program in source code form. But, note that the patent and copyright provisions in the license for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas require you to include a notice of attribution in your program.
Re:I'm sure this all makes sense to lawyers... (Score:1, Informative)
You could write your own private application to read/write these formats and maybe that wouldn't be illegal. I'm not sure. But it really isn't practical for everyone to write their own app. And it certainly will require a patent license from MS to distribute any such application. Effectively (or maybe legally) a patent lincense is required to legally read/write the document formats.
Assuming the patents get approved. AFAIK, they're still pending.
- krafty
Re:XML (Score:2, Informative)
There appears to be nothing at http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2003/word ml
wordml. Is that like Manimal? Never mind. :)
FUD (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Interesting Quote (Score:2, Informative)
The First Amendment (along with the rest of the Bill of Rights) was not intended to expand rights but to clarify rights that already existed.
Some of the Founders felt that the Bill of Rights was unnecessary because the Federal Government's role was so limited by the body of the Constitution that it wasn't possible for the Federal government to impose on any of the rights itemized in the Bill of Rights. At the time, there were concerns (valid, as it turns out) that itemizing a subset of one's rights in the Bill of Rights could lead to actually limiting the rights of states and individuals to those listed (although the Ninth and Tenth Amendments tried to address these concerns, they have not met this goal very successfully as they have been increasingly ignored by the courts).
The adoption of the Bill of Rights was mostly to address the concerns of the Antifederalists and "take the wind out of their sails". By the time the Bill of Rights was ratified, there was relatively little interest in it since the Federalists had prevailed already -- but since they had prevailed, in part, based on the promise to consider a Bill of Rights, it went ahead. I think today we might consider the Bill of Rights as something arising from "cloakroom politics".
WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
Office 2003 XML Reference is already available (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/default.mspx [microsoft.com]
Re:I'm sure this all makes sense to lawyers... (Score:4, Informative)
That said, patents have an interesting way of working. The patent holder can prevent the USE of his/her patent, even if it's non-commercial (aka private) use. This means that if the patent holder (Microsoft) gives a patent license that says you can READ them, then it doesn't matter who created the original Word document to begin with -- Microsoft has patented the format of that document, and any use of the propritary format falls under patent law. And patent law explicitely states that even USE of such a patent can enforced by the patent holder.
The magic "EULA" that you accepted is US patent law, which applies to anyone in the United States. Just living here is the EULA.
So, in a nutshell, the creator of that document owns a copyright on that document, but the format used to create that document is patented by Microsoft, so they get to enforce that patent and anyone who did not agree to their EULA can be sued.
Of course, Microsoft doesn't really care about an individual user, but anyone writing a tool to write a file into their patented document type falls under the "distribution" clause of patents, and that company is fair game.
Re:So what ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:DOC format question (Score:2, Informative)
OK, there seems to be a lot of confusion here. I have heard, but do not have confirmation that the MS Word license includes a clause that says you will not open/modify any files you create in anything but Word.
You are contributing to the confusion. I have just read the Word 2003 EULA and no such clause exists.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Informative)
However, the documents are licensed under very permissive terms-- see the W3C Document License [w3.org].
See the W3 IPR FAQ [w3.org]:
2. Who holds the copyright on W3C documents?
The original author of the document. Many documents are created by the W3C and we consequently hold the copyright. Owners who allow their works to be published on the W3C site retain the copyright, but agree to the W3C license for the redistribution of those materials from our site.
Re:Proprietary XML? (Score:3, Informative)
XML is a markup language, not a language for serializing data structures. The two are not the same: most of XML is completely unnecessary for serializing data structures, so something much simpler would do, while at the same time, XML lacks primitives for common data structures found in real programming languages. That makes XML a really poor choice for serializing data structures.
XML has been misused for the purpose of serializing data structures, but that's fitting a square peg into a round hole.
XML is designed for document interchange. It's an idiosyncracy of MS Word that it is currently using data structure serialization ("marshalling") for its storage format. Actually, it's not even an idiosyncracy, it is plainly idiotic. But that's not the worst problem with MS Word anyway.