[ILUG] openoffice.org

[Ronan Waide]

On February 2, niall at linux.ie said:
> However, the people at Ximian, like the rest of us, have to pay for their
> cornflakes, and they have identified a revenue opportunity where they've
> basically said "Well, if you want to pay Microsoft for the server then you
> can pay us for the client (I know, it's not for the client per se, but
> that"s the net effect)". In the peculair world which MS specifiers inhabit,
> some of them will apparently be happier paying for it anyway.

Or perhaps in order to build something that interoperates with
Exchange they had to pay some unspecified amount to MS, or perhaps
sign an NDA. You'll find a few bits of code on the net to hook into
Microsoft's version control "standard", all of it with annotations
that source releases aren't possible because of the necessity of
signing an NDA before getting the specs; I don't see why this'd be any
different.

Of course, it may also have something to do with recent Microsoft
shrink-wrap licenses forbidding the use of various products in making
free software. It's all well and good to challenge the legality or
even the common sense of such a license, but if you want to play in
Microsoft's sandbox in this way, you have to play by their rules or
they can simply withhold specs.

Cheers,
Waider.
-- 
waider at waider.ie / Yes, it /is/ very personal of me.
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                                 - BPC's dad & BPC, installing Mandrake