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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: Potential copyright or intellectual property issues?
From:       Marc Stephenson <marc () austin ! ibm ! com>
Date:       2001-09-19 1:18:12
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I suppose that I should have been more specific.  My perception is that the
corporate attorneys are more concerned about the import filters which 
allow the reading of Microsoft's proprietary formats (like Word and Excel).

I'm not so concerned about the names of the apps or packages; that's relatively
straightforward to fix (killustrator/kontour).

Is there any documentation anywhere which can provide satisfactory explanations
that the import filters were produced in a legal manner?  I'm not trying to
stir anything up; I just want to be able to continue making available the KDE 
packages for AIX.  I'm running KDE 2.2 on my AIX system right now, and I want 
to continue to use it.

I've searched for combinations of "KDE" and "Microsoft" and format to find a
definitive answer, and the information is sketchy.  I've seen the agreement
that you have to make in order to get the Word 2000 file format, and it is 
specifically forbidden to get it for use in a general purpose word processor 
program or one which can convert that format into another format.

Marc
-- 
Marc Stephenson		                          IBM Server Group - Austin, TX
Internet:  marc@austin.ibm.com                          NOTES: marcs@us.ibm.com
Phone:   512-327-5670                                              T/L 678-3189

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