12.17.07
OOXML’s Patent Ugliness Just Got Uglier
It would be unnecessary to repeat yesterday’s discussion about patent risk in OOXML. You can follow the links to find out more. What’s new is the following:
What Microsoft intends to do with its OSP is to forbid sublicensability, which is one of the cornerstone for distributing GPL code. The OSP page on Microsoft website is pretty clear about it: “There is no need for sublicensing”.
It was only a couple of days ago that we mentioned a different type of ‘GPL poison’, which appears to have become somewhat of a strategic tool. Novell helps Microsoft a lot in that respect. It is used as a GPL proxy that spreads some of this ‘poison’ and helps Microsoft pass the acid (legal) test, e.g. in Europe [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
Victor Soliz said,
December 17, 2007 at 7:36 pm
This is insane! I wonder what the usual OOXML friendlies have to say about this one…