Joho the Blog
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February 13, 2004
In response to my post about a Microsoft presentation at Emerging Tech, Bob "Professor" Morris points us to a Microsoft page that explains something important about its XML schema for Word, Excel, etc.:
So, Microsoft's patents prevent me from writing a program that reads a Word XML file? Wow, that's harsh. And besides, isn't "schema" already a plural? Posted
by D. Weinberger at February 13, 2004 08:35 AM
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Comments
"Schema" is singular. The plural, if you're a true pedant, is "schemata". Greek, not Latin.
Posted by: Seth Gordon | February 13, 2004 10:48 AM
D'oh!
Posted by: David Weinberger | February 13, 2004 11:16 AM
I think this whole thing is stickier due to the copyright vs. patenting of software.
Several paragraphs down is:
Except as provided below, Microsoft hereby grants you a royalty-free license under Microsoft's Necessary Claims to make, use, sell, offer to sell, import, and otherwise distribute Licensed Implementations solely for the purpose of reading and writing files that comply with the Microsoft specifications for the Office Schemas.
Which would prevent you from writting an app that used the schemata and call it your own. With attribution you could write your schema read/write app.
Posted by: jr | February 14, 2004 09:11 AM