Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Microsoft Volume Licensing infringement?
From: Steve Friedl <steve () unixwiz net>
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 16:53:32 -0800
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 _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/
Current thread:
- Microsoft Volume Licensing infringement? Randall M (Jan 30)
- Re: Microsoft Volume Licensing infringement? Gaddis, Jeremy L. (Jan 30)
- Re: Microsoft Volume Licensing infringement? Gaddis, Jeremy L. (Jan 30)
- Re: Microsoft Volume Licensing infringement? Steve Friedl (Jan 30)
- Re: Microsoft Volume Licensing infringement? Robert Kim Wireless Internet Advisor (Jan 30)