[lug] ms patenting xml ??

[rm at fabula.de]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 09:28:23AM -0500, Michael D. Hirsch wrote:
> On Monday 26 January 2004 11:57 pm, Terry Branaman wrote:
> > Don't OpenOffice and StarOffice already use XML to store documents? If
> > so, then (depending on how broad Microsoft's patent is) their patent
> > should be denied, since there are preexisting examples.
> 
> That's what I thought at first, but then I thought I recalled that OOO uses 
> several files, not just one file, for each document.  MS is patenting the 
> idea of useing a single file.  Talk about stupid distinctions.  

Hmm, indeed, stupid. But since AbiWord _does_ store all information
(including stylesheets etc.) in a single XML file i doubt they'll have 
a chance (DTD a: "http://www.abisource.com/awml.dtd").
Anyway - at least in Europe there's little chance to patent a document
format. The question is: why do they even try? Esp. when looking at
the recent "software patentability" discussion over here in Strassbourg.
It allmost looks like they provide arguments for the OS side ....

 Ralf Mattes

> Michael
> 
> > On Mon, 2004-01-26 at 20:11, bill ehlert wrote:
> > > Microsoft Justifies Its XML Patent Moves
> > >
> > > By Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft Watch
> > > January 24, 2004
> > >
> > >
> > > Microsoft watchers are questioning yet again
> > > Microsoft's intentions toward XML, the Worldwide
> > > Web Consortium (W3C) Extensible Markup Language
> > > standard.
> > >
> > >     . . .
> > >
> > >
> > > http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1460095,00.asp
> > >
> > >
> > > **  i really don't understand this.
> > >
> > >     but i have the feeling it's a  Bad Thing
> > >     for open-source software
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
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