Re: Regarding OOXML and Microsoft patents

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

    Does that wiki page roughly match your professional legal advice ? (or
    even experience ?).

I haven't got any legal advice about this question yet.  Have you?

    Anyhow - I am interested at your interest in the Open-Standards debate.
    As a tactic, I have noticed that ODF (or just Open Standards) are
    increasingly promoted at the expense of software freedom - which is a
    travesty.

You are right that open standards cannot substitute for free software,
but that's a different issue.

    This leads to extraordinary scenarios - where people who you
    might have hoped were Free software advocates start actively promoting
    all manner of proprietary 'plugins' (etc.) even for proprietary Office
    suites - simply because they are "ODF" ;-)

When they do this, we should argue against it.  However, that doesn't
mean the ODF battle is unimportant for us.  Practically speaking,
OOXML puts lots of pressure on people to keep using Microsoft Office,
and therefore to keep using Windows (or MacOS which is no better).
ODF allows encourages them to move to Open Office, which is free
software.

For the reasons you mentioned, we cannot simply endorse what those ODF
advocates say.  But we should work for the cause they are working for.