Posted on 12/23/2009 2:45:21 PM PST by Ultra Sonic 007
Microsoft Word is now scheduled to be prohibited from sale beginning January 11, 2010. That's less than three weeks away. The good news: Microsoft has promised a fix, one which will be rolled out before the deadline arrives.
If you don't understand, you might have simply missed this story, or dismissed it as something that Microsoft would ultimately use its considerable clout to have pushed under a legal rug.
But it's no joke. In August of this year, a court sided with a small Canadian company called i4i that holds a 1998 patent on the way the XML language is implemented, finding that Microsoft was in violation of that patent. The result: Microsoft was told to license the code in question from i4i or reprogram it, or else Microsoft Word would have to be removed from sale in the market. The original ruling gave Microsoft until October to get its legal affairs in order, but appeals pushed that out a bit.
Now a federal court has upheld that original ruling -- plus a fat, $290 million judgment against the company -- imposing the new January 11 D-Day on the matter. Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office will both be barred from sale as of that date -- though naturally you'll still be able to use copies of Word and Office that you already own, and Microsoft will be allowed to keep supporting those copies.
Unless Microsoft ships the promised technical workaround very quickly, things are going to get extremely dicey in the computer world, and fast. Not only will retail outlets selling shrinkwrapped copies of the software be affected, computer manufacturers (who complained loudly about this injunction when it was announced) who bundle Word and Office on the computers they sell will also be seriously impacted by the ruling.
(Excerpt) Read more at tech.yahoo.com ...
I’m suggesting a not-ready-for prime time update might be released on 1/11/2010, and that it is best to see how it goes before updating around that time.
Then disable them. Just click on Word Options under the main Word menu and look for AutoCorrect Options.
Understood. Glad I asked. :-)
I would bet huge money that some years ago, Microsoft had i4i “demonstrate” whatever product / program / protocol we’re talking about here, decided some months later that they weren’t quite interested in it, and some months after that, abra cadabra, there it is in Microsoft Word.
That’s how Microsoft became Microsoft.
I have never had OpenOffice crash on me, in windows or Linux. What version you running?
>> the way the XML language is implemented
And CO2 is a pollutant.
Anyone familiar with the specifics of the patent violation?
Does it work better than your link?
Well, he who lives by the corruption of intellectual property law dies by the corruption of intellectual property law.
The patent affects OpenOffice too, as well as any other word processing program that uses XML.
Using XML to represent a document is obvious to any person ‘skilled in the art’ of computer programming, as the patent lingo goes.
These idiotic combo patents (use A to create B) make practically impossible nowadays to write a non-trivial software application without tripping over a dozen of them. This includes writing freeware for Linux.
I own one of these idiot combo patents: Use SQL to create a user password database. My boss made me apply for it, and I was astonished to see it granted.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.