Port 25 - Communications from the open source community at Microsoft

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1. Swashbuckler said:

   Microsoft announces the project, but according to this (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1985410,00.asp) article "Jason Matusow, Microsoft's director of standards affairs, came right out and said Microsoft was not contributing code or providing architectural guidance for Open XML Translator."
   
   So, what is Microsoft contributioning to the project that justifies it announcing the project?

   posted at 03:49PM 07/06/2006
2. jwelch@bynkii.com said:

   Yeah. Again, Microsoft *has* to realize that it's operating for a position of actively being distrusted in anything it does, and act accordingly. Vague annoucements aren't going to mean anything until the code is available for use.
   
   

   posted at 07:22PM 07/07/2006
3. Wesley Parish said:

   Well, FWLIW, I've downloaded the project, source code and all, and have to say, the word processing source - which is all there is at the moment - looks clean.
   
   I have another project on my mind, in consequence.  Because of these three factors: I meet a fair number of elderly people, pensioners mostly, regularly, they usually have quite old computers given them by family or friends, and ODF does look like the Flavour-of-the-Month with governments world-wide - I am seriously considering adapting it to the older versions of MS Word found on these computers.  Most of them have problems paying their winter power bills, so how they are supposed to front up with the money for a brand new computer plus software with all the bells and whistles, I don't know.
   
   That the project is written in C# isn't a problem - there's two Free and Open Source dotNET reimplementations out there, and one - dotGNU - is based more or less on the GNU toolkit, which I've used quite successfully - in MinGW32 incarnation - under MS Win95.
   
   What I would appreciate from Port25 is someone digging out the relevant plugin details from MS Office 95 and 97 and emailing them to me.  Or pointing me in the direction of a website with those details - which I understand are now retired and/or incorporated into the more massive MS Office 200x SDKs.  Alternatively if you could get the source tree disinfected from Third-Party Licensed Code, release it under the Microsoft Community License and send me a CD-ROM of it, thus appointing me the maintainer - either way I'm not really worried.  (Of course, there would be a lot of Microsofties who would argue that would force Microsoft to compete with its own products - but then Steve Ballmer's already said that's happening without anyone besides Microsoft having access to the source code, so one may as well get the kudos and the bug-fixes into the bargain. ;)

   posted at 04:29AM 07/08/2006
4. rjdohnert said:

   " Yeah. Again, Microsoft *has* to realize that it's operating for a position of actively being distrusted in anything it does, and act accordingly. Vague annoucements aren't going to mean anything until the code is available for use. "
   
   As Wesley said, Microsoft has made the information available.  If you are unhappy with what Microsoft is doing or what they have provided then by all means do wait for the ODF plugin that should be available shortly
   
   @ Wesley  The foundation has said their plugin will work on Office 97 and above.  As for Office 95, good luck.
   
   

   posted at 03:44AM 07/09/2006
5. Port 25 said:

   We just wrapped up the O'Reilly Executive Day here at OSCON after two days of what many would call record heat in the Pacific Northwest. With many of the Port 25 folks commuting from larger cities across the US, Portland is a welcome break. For those

   posted at 01:27AM 07/26/2006