Hi Richard, I was interested by your mail:
On Sat, 2007-07-07 at 16:48 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > The 2006 Microsoft patent policy does not eliminate the patent > obstacles to implementing OOXML. See > http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/EOOXML_objections#Patent_rights_to_implement_the_Ecma_376_specification_have_not_been_granted > (and the following questions too). Does that wiki page roughly match your professional legal advice ? (or even experience ?). I would (personally) not rely exclusively on such a clearly biased analysis :-) Also, some of the criticisms appear (to my untutored mind) also to apply to Sun's similar covenant: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.php which (personally) I tend to view in good faith, not as some perfidious plot to destroy the free world. Anyhow - I am interested at your interest in the Open-Standards debate. As a tactic, I have noticed that ODF (or just Open Standards) are increasingly promoted at the expense of software freedom - which is a travesty. This leads to extraordinary scenarios - where people who you might have hoped were Free software advocates start actively promoting all manner of proprietary 'plugins' (etc.) even for proprietary Office suites - simply because they are "ODF" ;-) I see OO.o representatives speaking at conferences, presenting from & praising OS/X and talking extensively about ODF, occasionally OO.o features and seldom about Free Software: a tragedy. Free Software necessarily implies an Open Standard [ we have the source after all ! ]. AFAICS - Standards may be open or closed, but Free software will eventually support them all. From my (no doubt highly not-thought-through) viewpoint: Open Standards, is just a game that big companies play so their proprietary software can compete & with which they bludgeon each other in public. It also seems to be a game that Microsoft knows how to play. HTH, Michael. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list