Re: RTF - proprietary or open?

On 6/28/07, Celejar <celejar@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 10:13:38 +0300
ndemou@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> [...]
> anyway, IMHO: even if RTF is "open" under some interpretation it's not
> to be used as a critical component of OS SW. You will have noticed
> already that it's hard to find the license for the implementation of
> RTF. Have you? Hundreds of pages of technical documentation and no
> license makes me nervous and it's *THE* reason for me not to use RTF
> when the licensor is a company like Microsoft and I want to help it's
> main competitor.

Understood. OTOH, a leading OSS product (Abiword) recommends RTF for
document exchange, and that counts for something to me.

if you are referring to link #2 in your original post then keep in
mind two things:
1) it was made in 2003 - ODF was not around at the time
2) he (Dom Lachowicz) seems to be the type of guy that I use this
phrase to describe: "technical matters are far more important than
legal ones".
So he sees things from that very specific point of view. That's good
if you want "the damn thing[1] to just work" but it's bad if you want
"the damn thing to serve the community for a long time". The times
have changed and we can't ignore legal issues any more. If microsoft
offers no clear/solid commitment regarding what we can and what we can
not do with their specifications then we should be searching for
alternatives as soon as possible. In between you may use the spec as
long as you don't get very dependent to its usage because some day you
may very well read some threats in the press about the hundreds of
patents/terms/IP rights or whatever Microsoft thinks your usage
violates

[1] a way to exchange documents with us much people as possible


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