[OpenISO] Unacceptably narrow "Open Specification Promise"

[Norbert Bollow]

Proposed text below.

Greetings,
Norbert.

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Unacceptably narrow "Open Specification Promise"
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Problem description:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Microsoft's "Open Specification Promise" is explicitly restricted to
only "the _required_ portions of the Covered Specification" (emphasis
added).  While the promise may still be valuable with regard to
specifications that declare all of the important functionality as
required and only unimportant additions as optional, in the OOXML
specification, sections 2.4, 2.5 and 2.6 of Part 1 clearly (and in
fact appropriately) describe most of the functionality provided by
OOXML as optional rather than required for a conforming
implementation.  Furthermore, using OOXML as the native document
format in any competitor to Microsoft's Office software implies using
the document format in ways which go beyond what is described in the
OOXML specification but which are likely to be covered by the claims
of Microsoft's patents.

Expected impact:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This makes it impossible to use OOXML as the native document format
of a future version of OpenOffice or Microsoft's other Free Software
competitors.

Possible solution:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Microsoft can make a less restricted promise, e.g. similar to Sun's
OpenDocument Patent Statement, see
<http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.php>.

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-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                      http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG    http://SIUG.ch
Working on establishing a non-corrupt and
truly /open/ international standards organization  http://OpenISO.org