http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/6015902/Microsoft-banned-from-selling-Word-in-US.html
Holy crap. Oh and, BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
Also, Openoffice infringes on the same thing, and i4i can file "lost profits" against OpenOffice.
Wow. This basically kills Microsoft Office, because although I don't know about whether PowerPoint works with XML files, Excel and Word certainly do.
Also, if this company goes after OpenOffice.org, I will be annoyed, as then people would be less able to obtain a good word processor.
I sense Butthurt.
Now this is just ridiculous!
Well, I still have my copy of Office XP, so I'll be fine.
When I first read about this, I was hoping it was just another case of "patent-trolling" that seems so prevalent in Texas, but after reading the Ars Technica article (http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/court-gives-microsoft-60-days-to-stop-shipping-word.ars) about it, I'm a little worried. Microsoft says they're going to fight it, and chances are they'll wind up just buying out the company (as they did with other companies). I'd be a little more worried if this affected more than the .docx and .docm formats (formats that OpenOffice currently does not natively support, afaik), but given that I have hated those ever since Microsoft introduced them, I'm a bit comme-ci comme-ca about this.
Quote from: "IanDanKilmaster"When I first read about this, I was hoping it was just another case of "patent-trolling" that seems so prevalent in Texas, but after reading the Ars Technica article (http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/court-gives-microsoft-60-days-to-stop-shipping-word.ars) about it, I'm a little worried. Microsoft says they're going to fight it, and chances are they'll wind up just buying out the company (as they did with other companies). I'd be a little more worried if this affected more than the .docx and .docm formats (formats that OpenOffice currently does not natively support, afaik), but given that I have hated those ever since Microsoft introduced them, I'm a bit comme-ci comme-ca about this.
docx can be read by OpenOffice, it just can't save them.
I knew there was an unofficial patch that would allow it to open .docx, but I don't think OO has done anything official regarding it yet. O_o
If they have, they'll be forced to remove that support as well (I guess it won't matter much if MS Office doesn't have it).
lol, sound strategy. If someone sues you over patent/copyright issues, just buy them out, then you'll own it.
Epic lulz achieved, approved by staff.
Drinks all round, gentlemen!
*facepalm*
well, this is pure logic, right here. *please note the HEAVY sarcasm*
eeh, if all else fails and everyone attacks each other in an all-out word processor war, we'll just fall back to the 90's, when all we had was basic wordpad. that's all someone really needs, when you get right down to it.
That, or people will just stop caring about the copyrights altogether (and wouldn't that be just wondarfuuhl!?)...
Well I'd say this is the problem with software patents, but I never liked the .docx format anyway so I find it as a bit of blessing in disguise.
No one's trying to take away your Word, chances are Microsoft will: A) as I said before, just buy out this company, or B) just release a new version of Word, sans patent-infringing XML-formatting. It all really depends on what option is the most economic.
Heh, back in the early 90s we still had the clone wars and things were barely standardized... you had a whole host of word processors and their clones to choose from... ^_^
Back then was compatibility (or lack of?) between the different word processors an issue back then?
heh, no, not really... most text was processed in .TXT files back in them days... :D
Back in the day, there wasn't anything to format anyway, only OS/2 could do those things before MSWord monopolized shit halfway -w-;
Well, you could give your files any extension you want, but they'd still be simple TXT files... That's where .NFO comes from...
Added after 28 seconds:
Before M$ stole it and used it for theys sysinfo crap...
Oh, I had nearly forgotten that files were a lot simpler back then so there wasn't need for different, fancy formats! I thought word processing platforms were like the home computer market overall in the 70's and 80's: A large variety of platforms each with their proprietary formats and accessories, all of which are incompatible with any other platform. ^^;
naah they were too busy ripping off hardware and turning it into completely incompatible stuff in those days