arkanes - Slashdot User

Comment Re:It's about time (Score 1) 409

by arkanes on Thursday December 11, 2008 @03:12PM (#26078973) Attached to: FSF Files Suit Against Cisco For GPL Violations

But, since these files are key to IOS as well, one could take the view that IOS is now under the GPL.

To prevent scare-mongering: This isn't how GPL viralness (virality?) works. Assuming that they have mixed IOS with GPL code in a way that would "infect" IOS (they'll argue that it doesn't, of course) they can either 1) GPL IOS to bring everything into compliance (fat chance) or they can stop doing that, stop distributing the stuff they have, pay a big fine, and rewrite everything in a hurry and at great expense - exactly what Linksys did before them. IOS being forcibly placed under the GPL is a vanishingly unlikely possibility (not even sure that a ruling that they must do so would be legal).

Submission + - Dark Corners of the OpenXML Standard

Submitted by

Standard Disclaimer

on Thursday January 04, 2007 @02:14PM

Standard Disclaimer writes: "Most here on Slashdot know that Microsoft released its OpenXML specification to counter ODF and to help preserve its market position, but most people probably aren't aware of all the interesting legacy code the OpenXML specification has brought to light. This article by Rob Weir details many of the crazy legacy features in the dark corners of OpenXML. As it concludes after analyzing specification requirements like suppressTopSpacingWP, "so not only must an interoperable OOXML implementation first acquire and reverse-engineer a 14-year old version of Microsoft Word, it must also do the same thing with a 16-year old version of WordPerfect.""

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