On Tue, 27 Feb 2007, Florin Iucha wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 06:53:36PM -0600, Mike Miller wrote:
>>>> Do you have a reference on that?  I can't find anything about a license
>>>> for ODF.  Are you sure you aren't thinking of a specific program that
>>>> implements ODF?
>>>
>>> Well, I just jumped out to the OpenOffice website, and noted that they
>>> use the LGPL.  I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that that also covers their
>>> specification.  Perhaps it doesn't.
>>
>> Right.  I don't think it applies to standards in the same way but I am no
>> expert.  I do think your idea about standards is solid though -- if you
>> want to promote a standard, license software implementing that standard
>> under BSDL instead of GPL.  You don't care about being involved in further
>> development; you just want the standard to be used.  So I agree with that
>> idea, at least if there may be strong interest from commercial developers
>> (otherwise the GPL might still do better because of its "viral property").
>
> It depends; remember that Microsoft appropriated all of the Kerberos 
> protocol (thus using the work that went into design and testing) but 
> added an incompatible twist that was proprietary.  Depending on your 
> opinions, that might or might not be a good thing.

Sounds like a bad thing to me.  Haven't they been doing something similar 
with ODF?  Microsoft sure loves to create the standards.

Mike