links to comments? [LWN.net]

links to comments?

Posted Sep 15, 2005 19:11 UTC (Thu) by stevenj (guest, #421)
Parent article: Microsoft Challenges Massachusetts on Open-Format Plan (eWeek)

Is the Microsoft letter available online anywhere? If so, a link would be appreciated.

FYI, here is a link to the Massachusetts draft standard and call for comments.

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Here's where to find the comments

Posted Sep 15, 2005 19:58 UTC (Thu) by dwheeler (subscriber, #1216) [Link]

You can find the comments here (for now). Here are Microsoft's comments. There were also comments from Adobe, IBM, Sun, and Corel, though they were all positive.

Here's where to find the comments

Posted Sep 16, 2005 16:54 UTC (Fri) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

The MS letter (whilst making a pretty good case for those who don't believe open formats are intrinsically important, or do believe that 'MS Office XML' is open) contains at least one factual error:
"StarOffice, Openoffice.org, Koffice and IBM Workplace. In reality, these products are slight variations of the same StarOffice codebase."

I don't know about IBM Workplace, but I'm pretty sure that KOffice is entirely independent of the StarOffice code. Maybe it shares an OpenDocument importer? This rather undermines the claim they then go on to make about this format only being supported by one bit of software. It's at least 2.

They claim their XML format is open. (available for public use under pertpetual royalty-free, nondiscriminatory, terms, and is fully documented). Presumably MAs objection lies in their version of 'non-disciminatory'? Or are they worried about retrospective patent-infingement attacks?

Here's where to find the comments

Posted Sep 16, 2005 17:25 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

KOffice is not OOo-based, TextMaker is not OOo-based, AbiWord does not use OOo codebase...

Who knows - may be some code is actually shared, but so what ? MS is free to do so as well. At least we have four different independently developed projects (including "normal proprietary application, not that joke called free software") with support for OpenDocument format. Now how many office suites with support for MS's XML format ? I know of exactly one...