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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: Microsoft proprietary formats must be supported
From:       Joel Sing <jsing () origin ! net ! au>
Date:       2000-04-24 0:21:10
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Hi All,

> [..]
> > into the necessary office in Redmond and steal the formats, or
> organize
> > a march onto the floor of the US Senate and demand the required
> orders
> > to Microsoft to open the formats, or someone needs to take up a
> > collection of $20 billion annual license fees to feed Microsoft for
> the
> > license, but somehow, one way or another, you need to find a way to
> > support Microsoft proprietary formats, so that they can be
> commoditized.
> 
> Perhaps we could contact the SAMBA team, and
> ask them how they accomplished these things.
Plenty of packet sniffing, hex dumps and late nights from what I've
heard/read ;)

> Opensource isn't about "MUST". Nobody compels
> you to do something, you chose to do it. That's
> one of the reasons it also goes by the name of
> "Free Software".
We don't have to comply but it would be very nice if we can port our
existing documents to KWord, etc. I don't see M$ making the effort to
import/export KWord docs ;-P

> Going on the SAMBA experience, the format documents
> are worth "not much". As it is, MS tends to alter
> its specs when SAMBA's hackers point out inconsistencies.
But the docs that are available are a good starting point. I think there
will be plenty of hex dumps involved and a lot of hard work. I think the
wv library has done a lot of the reverse engineering already...

Cheers,

Joel Sing

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