On Tue, 27 Feb 2007, Florin Iucha wrote: > On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 06:53:36PM -0600, Mike Miller wrote: >>>> Do you have a reference on that? I can't find anything about a license >>>> for ODF. Are you sure you aren't thinking of a specific program that >>>> implements ODF? >>> >>> Well, I just jumped out to the OpenOffice website, and noted that they >>> use the LGPL. I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that that also covers their >>> specification. Perhaps it doesn't. >> >> Right. I don't think it applies to standards in the same way but I am no >> expert. I do think your idea about standards is solid though -- if you >> want to promote a standard, license software implementing that standard >> under BSDL instead of GPL. You don't care about being involved in further >> development; you just want the standard to be used. So I agree with that >> idea, at least if there may be strong interest from commercial developers >> (otherwise the GPL might still do better because of its "viral property"). > > It depends; remember that Microsoft appropriated all of the Kerberos > protocol (thus using the work that went into design and testing) but > added an incompatible twist that was proprietary. Depending on your > opinions, that might or might not be a good thing. Sounds like a bad thing to me. Haven't they been doing something similar with ODF? Microsoft sure loves to create the standards. Mike