Sorry to bother you with such uninteresting matters folks, but you might find
the following fragment interesting. MIcrosoft's chief attorney John Warden
questions senior vice president (number 3 in Redmond) Paul Maritz:

 Q.  WILL YOU TELL THE COURT WHAT IS IN 2318, MR. MARITZ?
18   A.  WHAT THE EXHIBIT DESCRIBES IS THE EFFORTS OF A GROUP
19   THAT GOES BY THE NAME "KOFFICE."  THIS IS AN OPEN-SOURCE
20   MOVEMENT EFFORT TO DEVELOP AN INTEGRATED SUITE OF OFFICE
21   PRODUCTIVITY APPLICATIONS, INCLUDING A WORD PROCESSOR, A
22   PRESENTATION PACKAGE, A SPREADSHEET PACKAGE, A DRAWING
23   PACKAGE, AND SEVERAL OTHER COMPONENTS.
Q.  OKAY.  RATHER THAN GOING THROUGH EACH OF THESE, CAN WE
25   JUST TURN TO THE FIRST SCREEN SHOT, PLEASE.  AND CAN YOU
16
1   TELL THE COURT WHAT THAT SCREEN SHOT IS?
2   A.  THIS IS A SCREEN SHOT OF THEIR SPREADSHEET PROGRAM
3   DEMONSTRATING THE VARIOUS CAPABILITIES OF THIS SPREADSHEET
4   PROGRAM, AND WHAT THEY ARE POINTING OUT HERE IS THAT, IN
5   ADDITION TO THE TRADITIONAL FUNCTIONS LIKE BEING ABLE TO
6   ENTER FORMULAS INTO THE SPREADSHEET AND DO ADDITIONS OF ROWS
7   AND COLUMNS AND THINGS LIKE THAT, THEY ALSO HAVE MORE
8   ADVANCED FUNCTIONS, LIKE BEING ABLE TO AUTOMATICALLY
9   GENERATE CHARTS.
10             SO THIS IS QUITE A SOPHISTICATED SPREADSHEET.
11             THE COURT:  WHAT IS THIS RUN ON?
12             THE WITNESS:  THIS RUNS ON THE LINUX OPERATING
13   SYSTEM, YOUR HONOR.

14   BY MR. WARDEN:
15   Q.  IS THIS KOFFICE UNIQUE?
16   A.  NO, MR. WARDEN.  TO MY KNOWLEDGE, THIS IS ONE OF A
17   COUPLE OF EFFORTS TO DEVELOP OFFICE-PRODUCTIVITY
18   APPLICATIONS FOR THE LINUX ENVIRONMENT.

         19             I AM AWARE OF ANOTHER EFFORT CALLED "ABI SOURCE."

20   AND THEY ARE ATTEMPTING TO DO MUCH THE SAME THING.  THEY'VE
21   STARTED DEVELOPING, IN PARTICULAR, A VERY HIGH-QUALITY WORD
22   PROCESSOR FOR THE LINUX ENVIRONMENT.

Apparently, you got them pretty scared!

The transcript from which this is taken is at: 
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/trial/transcripts/jan99/01-28-am.htm

More interesting: this afternoon I attempted to apply IBM's java BeanMaker to
the kword.dtd in the hope of generating a parser for it. Unfortunately,
BeanMaker refused to create a parser bean for a dtd going as much as five
levels deep. Yesterday, I tried the easy way and attempted to create and XSL
file to convert a kword document to HTML. Unfortunately, this goes best with
recursive structures, while a kword document is to a high degree iterative.

(Eh, just in case, I am not on the list.)

keep up the good work,

-cjr
http://billwatch.net/