On Monday 03 Nov 2014 19:45:33 Guru wrote: > For a 'non techie' like me, can Narendra or anyone else explain why open > apis should mean no to Excel.
Yes. Excel and most M$ products are a pile of opaque rubbish that "standardizes" bugs, software goof ups and ignorance so that they can maintain some sort of backward compatibility.They have also discovered it is a great way to prevent everybody else from making products that can work with M$ products without using expensive M$ tools. And to charge certification fees. Excel and doc formats were binary blobs wrapped in XML. Autocad dwg is another closed "standard" afaik. In the case of excel one has no way of knowing what the stuff inside the blob actually means because the standard does not say so. In the second case one may know everything but cannot create a software for reading and or generating a dwg file. Read below. > Does this apply to other proprietary sw also? Proprietary is an incorrect term all copyright software - including most FOSS - is owned by their respective copyright owners. Closed software is the correct term Mostly yes. Closed products also rely on encumbered standards. Such standards require patent hobbled pieces of software to be incorporated to be functional. Eg. mp3 and mp4 standard. Thus although the standards are open they cannot be used or interfaced with. Some standards are additionally copyright restricted and prevent distribution without an NDA, a rather ridiculous situation. > regards Mostly yes -- Rgds JTD _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
