Re: Microsoft Volume Licensing infringement?

[Robert Kim Wireless Internet Advisor <evdo.hsdpa () gmail com>]

Steve, good point. thx

On 1/30/06, Steve Friedl <steve () unixwiz net> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2006 at 06:15:23PM -0600, Randall M wrote:
> > Anyone on here get an email from MS volume licensing services stating that
> > all XP office and 2003 professional needs updated to remove the 3rd party
> > Patent infringement?
>
> Yes, its seems to be the real deal. I can't find the announcement on
> Microsoft's site, but this one is representative of the ones I've seen.
>
>        http://www.msd.uga.edu/announcement.php?news_item_id=1050
>
>        Microsoft Office: Action Required
>
>        (01-27-06) - Background and Summary
>
>        A recent decision from a court case has determined that
>        certain portions of code found in Microsoft Office Professional
>        Edition 2003, Microsoft Office Access 2003, Microsoft Office
>        XP Professional and Microsoft Office Access 2002 infringe a
>        third-party patent.  As a result, Microsoft must make available
>        a revised version of these products with the allegedly infringing[*]
>        code replaced.
>
>
>        ...
>
> It references a KB article on the Microsoft site which talks about Office
> SP2 removing certain features:
>
>        http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/904953/
>
>        ...
>        Because of legal issues, Microsoft has disabled the functionality in
>        Access 2003 and in Access 2002 that let users change the data in linked
>        tables that point to a range in an Excel workbook. However, when you
>        make changes directly in the Excel workbook, the changes appear in
>        the linked table in Access.
>
>
> Volume licensees are *required* to install Office SP2 with new deployments,
> but are only *requested* to do so for existing deployments. I'm not sure
> that they can require anybody else to do this, though bundling the "fix"
> in with other stuff which was released months ago means that lots of people
> probably have it by now.
>
> I think this undermines a lot of the perceived benefits of Microsoft's
> indemnification, which is one of their features over open source. It
> doesn't mean they'll go to the mat for the users, it just means that
> they'll quietly disable functionality and tell us about it we've installed
> the service pack containing the disablement.
>
> Anybody can do *that*.
>
> Steve
>
> [*] Seen elsewhere: "allegedly infringing"? If a court ruled, it's not "alleged"
>    any more.
>
> ---
> Stephen J Friedl | Security Consultant |  UNIX Wizard  |   +1 714 544-6561
> www.unixwiz.net  | Tustin, Calif. USA  | Microsoft MVP | steve () unixwiz net
--
Robert Q Kim, Wireless Internet Advisor
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