Court rules MS Word Illegal for sales!

talisman · Post by **talisman** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 11:58 am

SFSxOI wrote:They used their own formats because back then we didn't have the technical innovations we have today and they saw proprietary formats as a way to maintain market share because once people got locked into a certain format then to keep using what they had created in that format meant staying with that partiicular product.

...which explains the need for Microsoft .doc file format today. All was proprietary back then, but the trend continued and I know some workplaces where they force people to use Microsoft Office, even if OpenDocument is readily available and OpenOffice.org easier to deploy than MS Office.

Post by **freak** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 5:47 pm

PB wrote:> You realize that both sides of this lawsuit produce proprietary software ?

Yeah, but XML isn't proprietary, which is what I meant. I meant in the old
days, apps didn't use open source components like XML, they used their
own formats.

XML is not software. Its an open standard just like HTML is, or the tons of ISO standards, or the Unicode standard, etc.. etc.. These are designed to make data exchangeable between software and are usually backed by the large software companies. This has nothing to do with open source software at all.

Here are two companies fighting over who owns an "idea" (its not even about the actual code), and you blame those that actually give away their ideas and code for free ?

talisman · Post by **talisman** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 7:26 pm

Thank goodness we don't have only serious problems, but ridiculous ones as well.

SFSxOI · Post by **SFSxOI** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 11:20 pm

freak wrote: Here are two companies fighting over who owns an "idea" (its not even about the actual code), and you blame those that actually give away their ideas and code for free ?

It isn't the idea they are fighting over, its the implementation of the "idea" in a specific configuration/purpose thats unique and single in its implementation. The canadian company developed their implementation first and applied for a patent and markets products based on their implementation. Microsoft came along and patented one of their own implementations. Both produced and sold products based on their implentation. The fact that the code may not be the same, and the XML formatting used in the two companies products may not be the same, but they both do the same basic thing and its that both doing the same thing in a product sold by both that places them at odds with each other.

Rook Zimbabwe · Post by **Rook Zimbabwe** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 5:15 am

I remember owning a BOG BOOK of file headers for all those formats which listed the code and location of each part of the hearder to those format files and what it stood for...

Sadly I sold it to 1/2 Price Books (as a part of a large box o books) by accident!

GWarner · Post by **GWarner** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 5:32 am

Rook Zimbabwe wrote:Sadly I sold it to 1/2 Price Books (as a part of a large box o books) by accident!

Ouch! That would have been a treasure worth keeping. Do you remember anything about the book like it's title and who the author was etc.

Rook Zimbabwe · Post by **Rook Zimbabwe** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 4:51 pm

I picked it up at a special gathering... {ahem} it was card stock cover and plastic ring bound... it had everything!!! Part of the title was CODEX as I recall!

It has been years!

SFSxOI · Post by **SFSxOI** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 11:44 pm

surely such a book would be outdated by now would it not?

blueznl · Post by **blueznl** » Sun Aug 16, 2009 9:36 am

Not if your aim is to understand older formats

SFSxOI · Post by **SFSxOI** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 6:10 pm

Microsoft has appealed the injunction > http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2 ... nction.ars