Re: RTF - proprietary or open?
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:23:20 +0300
ndemou@gmail.com wrote:
> On 6/28/07, Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 10:13:38 +0300
> > ndemou@gmail.com 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
I'm also referring to the (current?) documentation, which states:
> Rich Text Format
>
> Rich Text Format, or RTF, is a file format that contains all the formatting information about your file, and which can be read by almost all word processors. This is the format you should use if you need to send a file to someone who doesn't use AbiWord. 'Rich Text Format for old apps' is an older version of RTF, but applications have to be very old to need it. You should use normal RTF unless you know that you need to use the older version.
> mind two things:
> 1) it was made in 2003 - ODF was not around at the time
IIUC, it was around, although it wasn't formally adopted as an OASIS
standard until 2005. After all, the thread I cite in that note refers
to OASIS / XML.
> 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
Thanks, I understand your points.
>
> [1] a way to exchange documents with us much people as possible
Celejar
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