As much as I hate to defend Microsoft...and I do hate defending Microsoft...they have patents on their implementation of XML, not XML in general. This has no effect on XML. It's akin to someone patenting a method of casting a die out of aluminum. That patent doesn't affect aluminum, nor does it affect the casting of aluminum dies except for protecting the methodology laid out in the patent. As for MS Office being bloatware, I can't defend that.
Acutally, they seem to be patenting their XML formats for their documents, which means that anyone that wants to be interoperatable with MS-Word, for example, is going to be forced to pay. And that is not cool. What it means is that someone in an off-shore country will have to publish their patented format, and anyone who wants to inter-operate with Word will just download from there and use it. Like a drug pusher, MS wants to lock you into their product, and make it so that you can't ever change to another.
Now, if MS gets their patents, then said that anyone can make use of them for free, as long as they acknowledge MS's patent, that would be O.K. But I doubt MS would do so.
ttyl
Farrell-- "Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories." -- Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Farrell J. McGovern Crowell Systems Linux Systems Admin. Toll Free (US and Canada) 1-800-366-4564 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://crowellsystems.com
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