Thought Experiments · I see that Microsoft has posted a litigation covenant on the OfficeXML formats (also read Brian Jones’ exegesis). In response, there’s a bunch of legal poking and prodding here and here; I don’t understand the legal arguments, and I don’t think they’re the interesting part of the story anyhow. So, let’s do two thought experiments. First, what if Microsoft really is doing the right thing? Second, how can we avoid having two incompatible file formats? [Update: There’s been a lot of reaction to this piece, and I addressed some of those points here.] ...
