CCIA Calls on ECMA to Reject MS's Proposal 6821

ECMA is a steping stone to the ISO. That's exactly what they did with C#-CLR they standardized with ECMA and then fast tracked to ISO.

ECMA and ISO BOTH require that all patents, etc, related to a standard MUST be available on RAND terms. That of course does not mean free (as in dollars), but it does mean that it can be implemented by anyone who is willing to pay.

Obviously, RAND and ECMA-ISO standardization does not guarentee GPL liscensing requirements will be met - so, yes I could see a potential problem for OSS developers here if the standard is published and widely accepted... But, I think that ultimately the same could be said of ODF as well in the future - if for some reason Sun changes their minds.

What? XML is an encoding of data structures... That's the whole point. Unless your going on about the "binary" key in MS XML documents which doesn't exist in the first place.

Personally, I think the whole thing is funny... MS opens up their reference schema's, publishes under a license that, to mind, is no less restrictive or ambiguous then Sun's license regarding ODF, they actually send them to a real, recognized standards body (that I have only heard called a rubber stamp organization since MS sent C#-CLR-CTS through it) and nobody can do anything but nit-pick about this or that clause. And a front organization for some of their biggest compebreastors comes up with a statment that any application for standardization of a MS format should be rejected out of hand... Why is that? Are they afraid?

-- Tom Shelton