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Posted on 10/11/2005 9:01:39 AM PDT by N3WBI3
The Open Document Fellowship has been created to give the OASIS Open Document Format added momentum, as the war of words between Sun and Microsoft gets bitter
The Open Document Fellowship was launched on Monday to add momentum to what appears to be a growing movement to support the open standard for the production, storage and dissemination of documents.
The Open Document Format for Office Applications, or OpenDocument, was developed by standards body OASIS. Last month, it received its first major seal of approval when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts became the first public body to insist on the use of an open standard such as OpenDocument.
The Open Document Fellowship says it has been formed to promote the OpenDocument format and that its aims include providing information about the standard "such as the degree to which companies and their products are committed to supporting the format" and ensuring the compatibility of the standard across "any software application or company".
The timing of the creation of a "fellowship" to promote open standards for documents comes just a week after Microsoft announced that it would, support Adobe's PDF format in Office 12, but would not support OpenDocument.
The founding members of the fellowship include OASIS, the Open Source Consortium and SchoolForge UK. Adam Moore, of Friends of OpenDocument, called on "all responsible citizens in the digital market place" to "embrace ODF as the central focus for document production".
The formation of the Open Document Fellowship also underlines the war of words that has broken out over this issue between Sun and the open source community on one hand and Microsoft on the other.
At the end of September, Sun's Simon Phipps posted in his blog that Sun was "already working on a move that raises the bar on what it means to create a truly open standard" and had sent OASIS "a new statement" saying that the company promised "unless you're intending to sue Sun in connection with ODF, you can use ODF with confidence and ignore the [Microsoft] FUD."
Phipps was unhappy that Brian Jones, a Microsoft Office project manager, had blogged that because Sun may own intellectual property relating to OpenDocument, anyone implementing OpenDocument would need a licence from Sun, and would have to supply Sun with a reciprocal licence. Phipps described this as an attempt to 'smear Sun'.
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Let me step out on a limb: Microsoft will claim to support it. Break it. Get away with it. Nothing will change.
I think MS will eventually come around, look how long it took them to finally acknowledge pdf. To me, this ODF is a great idea and I can't really think of a downside for it.
This is a bit disturbing. I don't trust Microsoft and since they're going to offer a competing technology in Windows Vista (nee Longhorn) I would be very, very suspicious if I was Adobe. Besides, it's no secret Microsoft is gunning for Adobe's market-share in consumer image software.
Well PDF will not get them where they want to get *especially if you can not open and edit the docs*. But the PDF license is open and yet protected enough to prevent MS from embracing and extending. ODF might be another story..
Wow. I guess everyone here must HATE those devils over at Adobe for not giving 100% freedom to MS to do anything they want with this format for free, right? Where is the outrage? =)
ODF might be another story..
I agree, this has a lot of potential and I would happily embrace an open format document.
Ahh but MS is free to do whatever they want with PDF, they just cant break it and still call it PDF! Do you see the difference?
Start with the fact hardly anyone other than leftist fanatics currently has it, add to it the fact that more leftists up in the state of Mass are now pushing it, and work your way down from there.
It hasn't been embraced by MS yet. Once they do, and they will, it'll spread out of just the libbie choice.
Every piece of GPL code out there has a copyright associated with it. PDF is not GPL but is completely open except you can not violate their copyright by making your own format and calling it PDF..
How you must hate those Adobe folks for disallowing MS total freedom with their name and product!
Wow way to try and put me into a nice neat box, complete with words for my mouth. If you can not see the difference between saying sure copy mine and feel free to change it just dont call it 'n3wbs' software anymore, and 'No you cant copy and change this at all' you're either purposefully of unintentionally being obtuse.
Corrected for the n3wbie.
Maybe, unfortunately IBM and their leftist brigade has pushed MS into some other leftist things they were previously uninvolved with, from this to Chinese partnering to even allowing homosexual union groups. IBM pioneered those things, too bad MS hasn't held out against them but eventually gave in themselves.
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
It is also mentioned in the preamble
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.
It is so prominent that it is the first term for acceptance
This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License.
Further it is mentioned in many of the other terms as well..
The GPL is a license it is a separate entity from patents and copyright, Have a nice day.
Of course I'm just messing with you! =)
Hey come on, it's not often I can accuse other companies of withholding info from Microsoft, I needed to roll with it for a while!
And now back to reality ...
LOL!!! Clever!
I see the MS butt-troll has arrived with his usual shrill attacking others as liberals or Communists all who don't bow down to the almight MS.
never heard of it
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