[odf-discuss] Microsoft and Novell cooperate on document formats

[marbux]

On 11/2/06, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at mclink.it> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Nov 02, 2006 21:05:10 PM -0800, marbux (marbux at gmail.com)
> wrote:
> > My guess is that it would take until the 12th of Never for such
> > plug-ins to be developed. I doubt Microsoft would even consider
> > allowing it to become licensed under the GPL for use on Linux.


Sorry, but why should such plugins, Visual basic etc... be GPL just
> because they are for Linux? There is no need at all for that, there's
> plenty of absolutely proprietary sw sold and licensed for GPL
> systems. You *can*, technically and above all legally, sell/ license a
> binary that only runs on Suse. And Novell _can_ enter such agreement
> and support it.


You snipped the relevant portion. I'm not suggesting that VBA or the plugins
would have to be GPLed. I was discussing the level of integration with SuSE
that would be required to integrate Active-X. I think it would take more
than linking a library, so Active-X would have to be GPLed in order to pull
it off.  But I could be wrong about that.


> Yes, I hadn't realized this explicitly, thanks: so there _is_ danger
> for ODF in this. Anything that may make ISO standardization easier, or
> even just _look_ like that, could sensibly delay the adoption of ODF.


Delay but not stop, I think. The bottom line is that governments around the
world don't want to export money to Microsoft. And where governments go,
those who wish to interact with government must follow.

See above. It wouldn't be the first time that something goes to limbo
> because "Microsoft said they'll do the same in the next version".


I could be wrong, but I think if that were going to happen it would have
already happened when Microsoft announced it was pursuing  MOOX
standardization by Ecma and ISO.  The fact that at least one flavor of OOo
is going  to support MOOX and ODF just doesn't compare in terms of the
magnitude of vaporware announcements.  At least in my book.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.opendocumentfellowship.com/pipermail/odf-discuss/attachments/20061102/af30d5ce/attachment-0002.html