and actually, i think you say it best when you say “I haven’t asked him but I notice he is reluctant to discuss licensing and often stubs his toe when he makes efforts in that direction. Brian seems much happier just showing off what they’re doing, includling all of the things that can be done already by using the Office 2003 support for XML.”

i personally think Brian would be best served by steering entirely clear of commentary on the licensing issues with respect to the ODF. given that it’s a complex arena, it’s only too easy to be misread. plus there’s the fact that such commentary has a tendency to come across as defensive in nature, and i think it’s just unhelpful.

far better to focus on the cool things that can be done with the new formats.

Whoopee! Now Office can do what OpenOffice/StarOffice and a host of other apps have already done for ages. That 10s of thousands of Office users have been requesting this function on a monthly basis for ages is also indicative of Microsoft\’s lack of s…

The comment he is responding to directly is right in front of that. Brian’s first paragraph puts it this way: “People have been upset about our licenses, but when I went to find the licensing information behind PDF and OpenDocument there was definitely a lack of clarity (to say the least). Since I asked those questions the OpenDocument folks provided some updated documentation that appears to be much more clear, so that’s good. Just because I was trying to better understand the situation doesn’t mean I was spreading FUD.”

The rest of his post consolidates some of his previous responses, and people will accept that or not. I understand his perspective and also the wariness about getting heavily into what is still an immature specification from that perspective.

Whether or not it would have turned out differently with Microsoft participation on the OASIS project — which was chartered specifically to base its result on the OO.o format as its input–we will never know. We’re left to see what happens from here, not from never-when. Now it’s time to see what happens as the heavy lifting and adoption experience plays out.

I agree that, for example, people got excited about Brian’s pointing to the November 2002 Sun IPR statement and that Simon Phipps reacted a particular way to that aggitation.

Also, as I hope you know, I do respect the balance you put into your analyses, such as this one about the PDF support. Maybe we should ban “FUD” as descriptive and work on the facts in evidence just as a good practice. Even if you do prefer the Sox [;<).

i’m fully in agreement that emotion laced invectives and analysis based on preconceived notions, but it was my opinion in this case that Groklaw did a good job of deconstructing what amounted to, IMO, inaccurate claims.

I think uncritical commenting on Groklaw as insightful is a disservice to all of us. Especially if it continues the meme that Brian Jones caused 100% FUD. All Brian did was mistakenly assume that the November 2002 Sun IPR Statement on OASIS Open Document implied the need for a license when the IPR statement was good enough to take as a license grant. Brian also asked for other people’s appraisal and linked directly to the IPR statement. Simple fact-checking and discussion would have cleared it up.

(Sun cleared it up another way, by producing a new IPR statement that is a tremendous improvement. No question about that. I hope Microsoft will follow through in making the same liberalization in the royalty-free license they are using for Office 12 XML, the Open Package Conventions, and other parts of Metro.)

Also, I read the retired lawyer’s analysis of the Microsoft license on Groklaw and it is all extreme extrapolation to worst cases, speculated out to the point where he treats a *supplementary* non-license comment that simply points out there is even more freedom in reading public records to be evidence that the license doesn’t permit writing under any circumstances. That’s all crap.

The point is, these behavior-labeling assertions aren’t helping. It just counters alleged FUD with more FUD. Simple fact checking and discussion is all it needed. Please ease up.