What is Microsoft up to?
Microsoft has claimed that their Open XML formats for Office 12 will be released under the same “open” license as their Office 2003 Reference Schemas, as I mentioned a few days ago. At the time, I couldn’t figure out why Microsoft would adopt such a liberal license without going all the way. All of their competitors in the proprietary software world (Corel with WordPerfect or Apple with iWork, for example) will finally be able to write import filters for Microsoft documents that aren’t reverse engineered. That will go a long way toward allowing people using different packages to collaborate.
At the same time that Microsoft is opening their formats, they’re including a restriction that prevents their use in GPL’d software. To me, the forbidding of sublicensing seems like a strange restriction– it prevents the sharing of code between parties writing software to read the format, but allows the writing of the code in the first place. In the framework of Stallman’s four freedoms, it allows the first three– the freedom to run, study, and redistribute the code– but it forbids the last, the freedom to improve the code. I wonder whether Microsoft is trying make itself look as much like a free and open collaborator as it can while still defending itself against the open source juggernaut.