Re: RTF - proprietary or open?

Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> wrote:
> Peter Hillier-Brook <phb@hbsys.plus.com> wrote:
> > It's a Microsoft "standard". Draw your own conclusions regarding "open".
>
> I'd certainly suspect MS, but its authorship is insufficient reason to
> conclude that it isn't open.

authorship is surely insufficient but why don't you take into account these also:

• Microsoft is a company with 95% share in the office suits
• convicted for monopoly practises some years before
  • continuously prosecuted for the same reason ever after
  • unwilling(to put it lightly) to comply to European Union's court rulings to make their products interoperable
• strongly(to put it lightly) opposed to an evolving open standard for office documents

anyway, IMHO: even if RTF is "open" under some interpretation it's not to be used as a critical component of OS SW. You will have noticed already that it's hard to find the license for the implementation of RTF. Have you? Hundreds of pages of technical documentation and no license makes me nervous and it's *THE* reason for me not to use RTF when the licensor is a company like Microsoft and I want to help it's main competitor.

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