we're following our original plan

[waider]

...to screw the customer over AGAIN, say Microsoft.

I'm trying to figure out what exactly they're patenting here. Parsing XML is pretty trivial due to its highly analstructured nature and well covered by prior art; they're "committed to openly sharing the XML schemas used by Office"; and the products themselves are protected by copyright which, thanks to Congress and Sonny Bono, is far longer-lasting than any given patent anyway.

I also note they've filed the patent application in Europe where, as yet, we don't actually support software patents. I'm sure we will now that Sir Billy's pushing 'em.

All this waffling aside, is the use of XML in Office really that big a deal? I mean, are people really using the XML goop that Word produces, or are they sticking with the old method of simply attaching multi-meg documents complete with embarassing revision histories to whatever chunk of software comes to hand?

Comments

[wisn.livejournal.com]

IIRC, proprietary XML is important for two reasons. First because future versions of Office will use XML as its primary document format, second because patenting their XML schema allows them to prosecute attempts at reverse-engineering the parts of the XML schema they don't share, covering easily-hacked engineering with strong legal protection. So, for example, third-party products will be able to display Word 2008 documents, but not handle the metadata without violating patent.

[odaiwai.livejournal.com]

Isn't their XML schema going to be along the lines of:
<Word Binary File>
$#@#@%$#%$#@% #@%$#@%$#%#%$#%#%#@%#@%#@%#%$#%#@$%...
</Word Binary File>