Nick,The key part of this blog "Notice: Sourcesense have provided speakers for OSS Watch events in the past, and a member of Sourcesense sits on our Advisory Committee."
Okay so it is attack of the surrogates talking AT us instead of TO us (which is sad really). Microsoft chooses to engage the project entirely through a third party. Gianugo chooses NOT to address why Microsoft can't/won't sign the CLA-C. Instead he acts like he thinks I insulted his honor or something (despite me having met him personally and I do think he's a super great guy who is just having an off month here) mysteriously OSSWatch now blog on why the OSSP Microsoft posted is splended but just worded poorly. I agree that it *MIGHT* be sufficient but it is worded *WORSE* than poorly and is such more than legally ambiguous. That some random guy at Red Hat commented on it is irrelevant (I worked there for 3-4 months and noted that I think that .NET is architecturally superior to Java, so what?). In addition to the problems the blog mentions, the key piece that bugs the living crap out of me is this: "Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification (“Covered Implementation”)"
What is conformance? For Sun it is something that passes the TCK (which they then attach terms to that preclude implementing compliant software as open source). Who is the judge of conformance....? I can only guess.. So either one of these two things would be fine with me: Microsoft certify that the OOXML work they are funding "conforms" to the specification before it is made part of POI or at risk of repeating myself incessantly, they sign a CLA-C for this stuff. The latter is obviously my preference (and far more workable). Until they sign the CLA-C or word this in a way that it is not ambiguous, my -1 stands. Please revert all of the source sense changes funded by the patent holder until the patent holder allows those changes to be distributed under the letter and spirit of the OSD.
Again, I want to see this code in here! I want an OSS OOXML! I consider Microsoft's helping fund work on POI to be the greatest realization of many years of all of our work! But I want a REAL OSS OOXML implementation, not something that I can't use for customers because they're afraid Microsoft will sue them later for patents.
-andy -- Buni Meldware Communication Suite http://buni.org Multi-platform and extensible Email, Calendaring (including freebusy), Rich Webmail, Web-calendaring, ease of installation/administration.
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
