Another Reason Microsoft's OSP Isn't Good Enough (Groklaw) [LWN.net]

Groklaw examines some issues with Microsoft's Open Specification Promise. "Here's an issue that affects everyone, not just FOSS developers, as explained by the Free Software Foundation South America in a long discussion of OOXML and why NBs should not approve it: It carries a number of dependencies on earlier Microsoft decisions, not all of which are part of the already-huge specification, and Microsoft's promise covers only fully-compliant implementations. But Microsoft Office isn't fully compliant with the OOXML (Office Open XML) specification, therefore those who seek interoperability with Microsoft's software won't be covered by its promise. Eek. I understand that to be saying that there are gaps in OSP coverage. You'll get documents you can't legally open unless you are using Microsoft's software, because the extensions found in Office but not in OOXML proper, so to speak, are not covered."

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Another Reason Microsoft's OSP Isn't Good Enough (Groklaw)

Posted Mar 27, 2008 19:06 UTC (Thu) by felixrabe (guest, #50514) [Link]

Microsoft should honestly just let someone disassemble the whole Office, print it out, and
send that to ISO.

[OT] The WSPP docs are good, though

Posted Mar 28, 2008 1:58 UTC (Fri) by midg3t (subscriber, #30998) [Link]

Although it's still in vogue to bash Microsoft at every opportunity, I thought I'd point out the Windows Server Protocols documentation that is tucked away on MSDN. There's a lot of high quality documentation there, I hope to see more in future.

To pre-empt any dismissive comments because of the mention of patent licensing on that documentation, don't forget that the patent risk has always been there, the only difference is that now the technical side of creating an interoperable implementation has become a lot easier.

[OT] The WSPP docs are good, though

Posted Mar 28, 2008 4:49 UTC (Fri) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

> Although it's still in vogue to bash Microsoft at every opportunity

From what I can see, most linux users are tired of hearing about microsoft and would dearly
love to go through a day without having to think about the redmond monopolist, and without
having them constantly mentioned.

At any rate, it's apparently still in vogue to troll linux sites and post microsoft talking
points. 8-)

[OT] The WSPP docs are good, though

Posted Mar 28, 2008 6:10 UTC (Fri) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

From what I can see, most linux users are tired of hearing about microsoft and would dearly love to go through a day without having to think about the redmond monopolist, and without having them constantly mentioned.

If I only could... The "Adds by Google" on our venerable LWN site has got into the habit of showing me the following on most visits:

Windows vs. Linux
Vertaile Windows Server 2003:a suhteessa Linuxiin.
www.microsoft.com/getth

(the text below the first line is in Finnish because of my locale).The same add actually appears on most Linux sites that show Google-supplied adds. Annoying, but one just has to try to keep in mind that by this mechanism, Microsoft winds up helping finance LWN...