Thread: and how we laughed

I'm starting to feel bad for Microsoft, too. Sure they brought it on themselves, but I still feel the pain.

I think my sympathy for Microsoft grows along with my hatred for Apple. I'm still stuck in the '80s, where they are the only two kids on the swing set.

no, I take it back

This is payback for suing TomTom over FAT patents in their Linux based GPS devices

Live by the sword, die by the sword

Karma.

They'll still find a way to sell it

pwned.

Word is a piece of crap anyway, it doesn't even do truetype.

First of all, the verdict makes me happy--maybe unjustifiably so, but happy nevertheless. However, did anyone actually read the article? Either that article's description of the ruling was completely inaccurate (it wasn't written by a techie, judging by the statement that XML is a "kind of programming language") or the ruling was completely unfounded. According to the article, "The ruling covers all Microsoft Word products that can open XML files or DOCX and DOCM documents." That sounds like the ruling wasn't that Microsoft violated i4i's patent on Microsoft's Office Open XML (.docx and friends) but rather on Extensible Markup Language itself. If I'm reading that correctly, the implications (due to this judge's ignorance) are very, very bad for UNIX, free software as a whole, and even the WWW.

Yeah, I was wondering that too. My company uses XML.

XML wasn't invented by a Canadian company though, it was invented by the XML Working Group, which was made up of several people from various companies, including Microsoft.

I understood the article to say that Microsoft stole their XML format ie, the tags, not the language itself.

I'm really hoping you're right.

The ruling covers all Microsoft Word products that can open XML files or DOCX and DOCM documents.

The key phrase is "XML files or DOCX and DOCM documents." If that "or" is being used as a conjunction, that would mean XML allegedly violates i4i's patent, as well as the specific DOCX and DOCM documents. Hopefully, it's an explanatory "or" as in "XML files, i.e. DOCX and DOCM documents." If that's the case, then you're right that they didn't find XML as a whole to infringe on patents. There's no reason that it should, but the wording of that article scares me.

Yeah, I think that it's just Microsoft's version of XML tags. XML is an open standard, which Microsoft helped design.

Another $40 million.

Ouch.

XML editing patent

Oh... that's much different than the XML format itself.

It's about time. Microsoft has stolen almost every product they've ever released and keep getting slaps on the wrist. I think the courts just couldn't do anything about it because there were no alternatives and knocking Microsoft down would severely cripple the computer industry.

Originally Posted by ninja9578

It's about time. Microsoft has stolen almost every product they've ever released and keep getting slaps on the wrist. I think the courts just couldn't do anything about it because there were no alternatives and knocking Microsoft down would severely cripple the computer industry.

Say what you will, Word 2003 is still much better than Open Office.

True, but Pages 09 is light years ahead of Word 03.

Originally Posted by khh

Say what you will, Word 2003 is still much better than Open Office.

Feature-wise, there's little difference
this is entirely personal preference

I prefer OpenOffice
purely because I know it better than any other office suite

Originally Posted by ninja9578

True, but Pages 09 is light years ahead of Word 03.

Never heard of it. I might look into it.
Edit: Ah, it's apple software -.-

Originally Posted by Ynot

Feature-wise, there's little difference
this is entirely personal preference

The spell checker in Word is better. I use that feature a lot.

Originally Posted by Ynot

I prefer OpenOffice
purely because I know it better than any other office suite

The main reason I don't use OpenOffice is the interface. It's way too ... slow-feeling, too heavy for me. Of course, Word 2007 is a disaster interface-wise.

Wow, this is huge. That's definitely karma, though..

Originally Posted by khh

The main reason I don't use OpenOffice is the interface. It's way too ... slow-feeling, too heavy for me. Of course, Word 2007 is a disaster interface-wise.

It's made in Java, that is the problem.

And Word 2007 is actually much more productive after you get used to Ribbon. It's just a huge change which makes most people hate it at first, but it's great once you learn it.

Originally Posted by Demon Parasite

It's made in Java, that is the problem.

no it's not
the vast majority of openoffice is C++

the only bits that are java, are the document filters

in fact, lifted straight from wikipedia

The following areas of OpenOffice.org 2.0 depend[92] on the JRE being present:

• The media player on Unix-like systems
• All document wizards in Writer
• Accessibility tools
• Report Autopilot
• JDBC driver support
• HSQL database engine, which is used in OpenOffice.org Base
• XSLT filters
• BeanShell, the NetBeans scripting language and the Java UNO bridge
• Export filters to the Aportis.doc (.pdb) format for the Palm OS or Pocket Word (.psw) format for the Pocket PC
• Export filter to LaTeX
• Export filter to MediaWiki's wikitext

Export filter to LaTeX

Really? Then why don't they use it for their render engine too? I know I don't see truetype in OOo.

Ynot's right though, there is little Java left in OOo. There used to be when Sun took over the project, they moved a lot of their Star Office into it, but the community slowly widdled away the Java.

i4i (the company with the patent) has confirmed that ODF (and indeed, any other XML technology) is unaffected

Summary of the position,

in 1998, i4i designed, and patented, a technique of encapsulating a rich-text document in XML format - this technique included a way to "extend" the functionality available through the document, by way of custom XML schemas

in 2001, MS went into partnership with i4i to include the feature in MS Word (due to mounting pressure on MS to include an open document format)

This would become OOXML

Seems MS took their code, and used it without upholding their end of the deal (Ie. they ripped i4i off)

i4i sued, and won
MS hit with big fine
MS likely to be ordered to strip OOXML out of MS Office

What a shame! Such a good program too.