Open XML Translator

re: Open XML Translator

Swashbuckler — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 23:02:09 GMT

Jason,

I'm confused. In an article (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1985410,00.asp) it claims that you said that MS is not contributing code nor architectural guidance to the project. So, what exactly is Microsoft contributing to this project?

It appears from the one article you linked to that Microsoft is *funding* other companies work on the project (i.e. ya'll are outsourcing the work). Is that the full extent of Microsoft's contribution? (Not trying to minimize it, just understand it)

re: Open XML Translator

jasonmatusow — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 02:30:14 GMT

Swashbuckler - If you read the original story you'll see that Vaughn-Nicols got it wrong

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1985186,00.asp

We ARE providing architectural guidance and funding to the 3 companies involved. We are not currently contributing code.

Does that help?

Jason

re: Open XML Translator

Swashbuckler — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 03:24:58 GMT

Yes, that helps.

A couple of additional questions if you don't mind.

1. A philosophical question: why the BSD license? Why not a reciprocal license? Basically, I think of using a non-reciprocal license such as BSD when I want the user to be able to productize what they create. I think of using a reciprocal license when I'd prefer they didn't. Since I don't see any reason to productize the converter (to sell it) I don't see why a BSD license would be used.

2. I think I know the answer to this question, but I'll ask it anyway: Why did you decide to put the code on SourceForge instead of CodePlex?

Microsoft Office to Support ODF: The Q&A

tecosystems — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 04:39:14 GMT

Breaking with my long-standing tradition of bringing you the news long after it's broken, I've got some early commentary on the news that Microsoft has announced support for the Open Document Format. This analysis was made possible by the folks...

re: Open XML Translator

jasonmatusow — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 08:09:05 GMT

Response to Swashbuckler -

Two good questions - let's hope for two good answers.

1) BSD is the most commercially friendly license. As I put in my blog posting, the point of this is to make a useful translator for many purposes. One of those is for the ISV community to consume. It is far easier for them to do so with the BSD. Reciprocal licenses are good in that they provide both a shield and sword and thus, from the commercial community's perspecitve, are good for certain projects. This one is a better BSD project.

2) CodePlex today is MS-based projects. The Translator is not being developed by us and given the political sensitivities around this project - seemed the better choice. CodePlex, in my opinion, offers some advantages to devs on the project but that is neither here nor there for this project. What matters more is transparency, a known-quantity hosting site, a well-run project (remains to be seen of course), a reasonable license, and ulitimately running code that is useful.

Jason

Jason

Microsoft ODF Announcement Followup

tecosystems — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 19:50:47 GMT

As expected, yesterday was dominated by questions and queries around the news that Microsoft was funding and contributing to (not code) a plugin for Microsoft Office that would support the Open Document Format. I had emails and IMs coming in...

re: Open XML Translator

Wesley Parish — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 13:28:09 GMT

So far I've downloaded the pre-alpha "OpenOfficePlugin" - last year - and the alpha "OdfConverter".

Only this year did I have the software guaranteed to do something with them - Visual [programming language] Express. Or at least I assume that I can throw OdfConverter at Visual C# Express and won't face a barrage of errors, cause I haven't got around to it yet. I haven't tried it on Mono yet, or dotGNU.

The code looks clean, and I like the BSD license. What I'm interested in - because I encounter a lot of people still using these products - is getting it to work on MS Office 9x. I do have legitimate copies of both MS Office 97 and MS Office 95 and it seems a shame not to make use of OdfConverter and MS Office 9x to allow some of the poorer computer owners I meet, to access government documents if New Zealand follows the current trend. I mean, MS Office 9x does write to html, so I don't see lack of XML-support as a show-stopping problem.

What I need is a full and complete MSDN core-dump of how MS Office 9x supports plugins and file formats.

The only problem I'm seeing at the moment is that it's only ODF2OXML at the moment. I would've thought it was going to be bi-directional even in alpha and only wordprocessing. That's a bit slack. I expected better.

Building Bridges to other XML-based Formats

Matusow's Blog — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 08:04:58 GMT

I have repeatedly made the argument that it is bad logic that leads you to the conclusion that there