Re: Regarding OOXML and Microsoft patents

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

> Here in Portugal, in the OOXML fake-standard debate, the position of
> Free Softwar activists has been that it's impossible to fully implement,
> or might even be downright illegal to do it independently, closed formats.

Well, neither OOXML nor ODF have been fully implemented by third party
implementations beyond the products they originated with.   

But there is a case of being "good enough", very much in the same way
that say that the Linux kernel was a good enough implementation of the
Unix API that it allowed Unix apps to be ran with that kernel.

Another example is CSS2: there are no browser that can claim 100% CSS
compatibility or with any other combination of Web standards, it is not
the end of the world if you do not pass the Acid test for CSS.   It
would be nice, but it is not mandatory to get the job done.

> True standards can't rely on hidden information (with special agreements
> that need to be signed with Microsoft for certain parts of OOXML,
> as has been found in a document Microsoft was forced to disclose in Spain).

Which information is this?    There have been accusations made about
this hidden information, but they have turned out to be bogus.

The closest I have heard of were the OLE tags for embedding OLE objects,
and those are present in ODF as well.

Miguel.