Microsoft Announces Availability of Open and Royalty-Free License For Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas

Good news for enterprise applications:

Offering Brings New Level of Transparency, Interoperability, Document Portability And Ease of Communication

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Nov. 17, 2003 --Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of a royalty-free licensing program for its Microsoft® Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas and accompanying documentation. The Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas enable organizations of all sizes to utilize industry-standard Extensible Markup Language (XML) technology in managing spreadsheet, word processing and form documents. Microsoft's new Office 2003 versions of Word, Excel and the InfoPath (TM) information-gathering program utilize schemas that describe how information is stored when documents are saved as XML. By licensing the schemas royalty-free, Microsoft builds on its ongoing commitment to promote the development of XML as the next-generation technology for integrating applications, services and data sources.

Source: PressPass

 

1 Comment


  • Here is even more transparency and interoperability : Excel 2003 xml doesn't export charts, shapes, VBA macros and other rich objects. Why would anyone use xml then?



    On the other hand, why would a vendor have to grant license to people only to use xml? If that's xml, then it's open by design. If it isn't, then it's binary file format. In fact, you've got to read between the lines to get the point. We are talking msxml here, not xml. Platform-specific implementations tie in developers and customers to a particular vendor, who can change the semantics anytime in the future.

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