Talk:Microsoft Open Specification Promise

List update?
Link over here http://www.microsoft.com/openspecifications/en/us/programs/osp/office-file-formats/default.aspx says that there are several formats that are not included in the list in article, such as "[MS-DOCX]". Should this list be updated? 109.60.135.111 (talk) 12:34, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

There is only one version of the OSP
user:Kilz has added info suggesting the OSP has multiple version like the comments of the expert were on a different text but in fact the OSP has not changed ever. This suggestion should therefore be removed. The OSP is the same patent license now as it was in 2006 and the article should not suggest otherwise. hAl (talk) 18:11, 26 March 2008 (UTC)


 * No, I have not suggested that there are different versions of the OSP. What I did was use past versions of the OSP to date the statement of Mark Webbink since it was on the first osp page at Microsoft. I also believe that exact dates for the quotes and SFLC comment should be in place. It is important, referenced information. I require precise attribution. I also direct you to the Consensus page. This is not a vote. Kilz (talk) 13:40, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I have reviewed these edits and I have to side with hAl's assessment. There is only one version of the OSP and Kilz's edits give, at least to me, the impression that there are more than one. I think the article is better without the web.archive.org reference.   Also, disagreements over content is *not* vandalism. Wrs1864 (talk) 17:35, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Amazing that you came here, right to this page and found this discussion. I have placed a different reference. Removing referenced information is vandalism, and against Consensus, its not a vote. Kilz (talk) 18:24, 27 March 2008 (UTC)"


 * Consensus does not mean we do it only the Kilz way. It certainly is not a vote but actually noone is really agreeing with your edits (unless you count the times that you yourself is doing the agreeing ). And your aggresive behaviour towards a new editor in this article just because they do not take your side is a disgrace. hAl (talk) 22:11, 27 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Your Ad hominem arguments do more to destroy your possession than you realize. You are fighting to remove the dates the quotes you placed on the article were made. This is not something others are agreeing with. Second, I was just stating my amazement, nothing more, you are reading into it something else maybe? Consensus means something we all can live with, you need to learn it isnt all your way, or you will revert. Kilz (talk) 02:02, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Unindent. The dates are there and the unsourced claim that there are multiple versions of the OSP has been removed. Can we move on? Thanks, WalterGR (talk | contributions) 02:31, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Comparison of OSP with IBM and Sun RAND licences
I have recently reverted back in a few sentences about the limitations of the OSP that User:hAl had removed with an incomprehensible (to me) edit comment. Since the text in question was originally my own submission, I would be happy to hear from other editors here whether it is felt worth keeping. You know what I think (I wrote it) and what hAl thinks (he deleted it), but what is the consensus?

On a second point, which I think gets to the heart of it and so is more important, there is a comparison in this article between the MS OSP, the IBM ISP and the Sun OpenDocument Patent Statement. Both of these latter two are represented by external links, and I think it is high time one of us set about starting the Wikipedia articles in both cases so that they can be discussed properly in WP.

There is an on-going argument here and on other articles (e.g. Talk:Office Open XML) as to whether these three licences are compatible, similar or identical, and to what extent each of them is compatible with the GPL (especially GPL3). Having briefly looked at it all again this morning, I would like to note down my take on the incompatibility, both for my own notes wrt the proposed new articles and to gauge the feelings of other domain experts that may be lurking on this page.

The differences to me are clear. The MS OPS excludes downstream developers in a way that the other two do not. One of the fundamental rights given by the GPL is to 'study' the code: if you want to learn about how an OS kernel works, just read the Linux code etc. (This is in fact used by many Universities to teach such arcane subjects). The MS OPS says:


 * "Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification (“Covered Implementation”)" (, my emphasis).

The other two do not restrict the promise so strictly just to 'implementations' of the 'covered specifications':


 * "IBM irrevocably covenants to you that it will not assert any Necessary Claims against you for your making, using, importing, selling, or offering for sale  Covered Implementations."
 * "Sun irrevocably covenants that, subject solely to the reciprocity requirement described below, it will not seek to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Specification, or of any subsequent version thereof ("OpenDocument Implementation") in which development Sun participates to the point of incurring an obligation, as defined by the rules of OASIS, to grant (or commit to grant) patent licenses or make equivalent non-assertion covenants."

They all go on to say that if you start suing us, then it's all revoked and we'll go for you too, which is fair enough.

The specific problem I think people have is that, if a developer studies the code that was used to implement something under the MS OSP, learns something from it, and goes on to use that knowledge to improve some other code elsewhere, then MS can sue them for the use of that idea in something that was not an implementation of a 'covered specification'. Simple.

OK, it's true that the Sun document rambles on about any 'development Sun participates to the point of incurring an obligation' in a way that loses me (IANAL, btw), but the point often made is that we know that the the Sun ODF promise is compatible with the GPL because Sun (and IBM) have released tons of code that implements ODF under the GPL - namely OpenOffice.org. Whereas Microsoft never have for anything covered by their OSP (or for that matter, their 'Covenant Not to Sue'). See (read the comments to that blog post) and  (this was one of the refs that hAl recently tried to delete from this article, so now you see how this all ties up)

While I can read English, I am not a lawyer, so if anyone here has a better take on these lines of thought, I would be glad to hear it. Arguments about these legalities have been dragging on for months on some other MS-tech related articles (like OOXML and ODF) so some clarity here and in the proposed two new articles (about Sun's and IBM's licences) would do a lot of good I think. --Nigelj (talk) 10:15, 13 October 2009 (UTC)


 * There is an on-going argument here and on other articles (e.g. Talk:Office Open XML) as to whether these three licences are compatible -- These are not the sorts of arguments WP editors should have. "The differences to me are clear." -- Completely irrelevant, as are all editor opinions about the subjects in WP. The only thing that matters is what reliable sources have to say on the matter. -- 96.248.226.133 (talk) 03:08, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Missing Critics Section
I am missing a section on critics of this specification - I can't imagine that there has been none. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.225.83.241 (talk) 13:53, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I second that, criticism is missing! 77.11.78.25 (talk) 13:38, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

missing history section
Like critics, there is also no section for history, which is as unlikely, to tell why microsoft make this commitment in the first place 05:26, 17 September 2010 (UTC)05:26, 17 September 2010 (UTC)128.250.42.22 (talk)

Open Specification Promise vs. Community Promise
I was redirected here from [Microsoft Community Promise]. But this article makes no mention of that, even though these are technically distinct. See: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/cp/default.mspx#EPAAC, which says: Q: How is the Community Promise (CP) different from the Open Specification Promise (OSP)?

A: The CP requires that implementations conform to all of required parts of the mandatory portions of the specification. Also, in specified cases (such as where the specifications have uses that exceed those needed to achieve the interoperability needs for which the release under the CP is being made), the CP may have special terms concerning what kinds of implementations are covered.

That seems like a pretty serious deficiency in this article.

Matthew Miller (talk) 02:32, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

List of protocols under "licensed technologies" covered is misleading
The list of procotols under licensed technologies is misleading if not completely wrong. Most of these are open standards published by other parties such as the IETF and IEE. Microsoft does not own patents for SLIP and IEEE 802.1x for example. Anyone can write software to implement these standards.

If Microsoft have been granted any patents for these it is for their particular implementations which are typically not publically available and or a legal error as there is prior art in the public domain.

It would be very surprising if ApplyTalk was owned by Microsoft rather than Apple.

The list comes from Microsoft itself (the second reference). I have corrected the article to point out that the list is a claim made by Microsoft rather than a fact and one for which contrary evidence is readily available.

Tortoise 74 (talk) 10:21, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

inconsistent logic
the text says "under any type of development or distribution model, including the GPL" but above it says about concerns that GPL3 may be excluded. Well, the "any type" can't logically exclude anything and "including the GPL" is obviously an example of "any type" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.1.197.188 (talk) 13:05, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Whole article is wrong; OSP is not a licence
The OSP is a promise:
 * 1) that Microsoft won't use their patents against you
 * 2) if you follow their conditions

This is not like a licence. For example, if MS gives those patents to someone else (such as a troll, like it did in Rockstar), then having a licence would mean you are still safe. In contrast, the OSP would be useless.

That's the biggest problem, but in general the article seems to have been written without reading the OSP. I'll try to fix it but a lot of things need fixing, so help would be welcome. Gronky (talk) 23:04, 17 February 2015 (UTC)


 * The parts about free software licences is also mostly wrong. Free software licences are not copyright licences.  The most popular ones mention patents, and pretty much all free software licences talk about giving the user the right to do X, Y, Z.  Those grants of "rights" are not limited to copyright. Gronky (talk) 23:14, 17 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Done. (I.e. I'm finished; more work could be done by others though.)  I deleted a lot of nonsense about licensing, sublicensing, "rights" etc.  None of those concepts apply to the OSP.
 * I also fixed some confused info about whether Microsoft can add third-party standards to their list of covered technology. Of course they can!  They can apply the OSP to the Mona Lisa if they want.  It just means MS promises not to sue you for using the Mona Lisa.  My example is silly, but the point is that there is no connection between ownership and being on MS's OSP list. Gronky (talk) 23:38, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Microsoft Open Specification Promise. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20080430103542/http://www.microsoft.com:80/interop/docs/officebinaryformats.mspx to http://www.microsoft.com/interop/docs/officebinaryformats.mspx

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External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Microsoft Open Specification Promise. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100227233629/http://farstarnet.com:80/jfbilodeau/labels/fud.html to http://farstarnet.com/jfbilodeau/labels/fud.html

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