Re: RTF - proprietary or open?
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On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 10:13:38 +0300
ndemou@gmail.com wrote:
> Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Peter Hillier-Brook <phb@hbsys.plus.com> wrote:
> > > It's a Microsoft "standard". Draw your own conclusions regarding "open".
> >
> > I'd certainly suspect MS, but its authorship is insufficient reason to
> > conclude that it isn't open.
>
> authorship is surely insufficient but why don't you take into account
> these also:
> - Microsoft is a company with 95% share in the office suits
> - convicted for monopoly practises some years before
> - continuously prosecuted for the same reason ever after
> - unwilling(to put it lightly) to comply to European Union's court
> rulings to make their products interoperable
> - strongly(to put it lightly) opposed to an evolving open standard
> for office documents
>
> 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.
Celejar
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