"You know how I always tell you when I make a mistake? Well, it looks like I made one when I told you that I didn't think Massachusetts would care what you said in any emails about Microsoft's OfficeOpen XML specification (now Ecma 376) being proposed as an addition to their list of usable "open standards". I'm hearing that they are reading the emails and will take them seriously."

Please join us for the Sixth Annual Symposium on Hot Topics in Patent Law on July 17, presented by the George Mason University School of Law and co-sponsored by Banner & Witcoff.

It's probably safe to say that most Americans, at one time or another, have felt they could do a better job of governing the nation than their elected officials. It may even be safe, in fact, to say that that has never been more true than it is today.

Linux vendor Linspire on July 11 said that the new Open XML translator is now available for use in its latest Freespire and Linspire distributions. The Open XML translator enables bi-directional compatibility, so that files saved in the Microsoft-created Open XML format can be opened by OpenOffice.org users, and files created by OpenOffice can be saved in Open XML format.

"Microsoft sought to avoid tangling itself up in the GPL license when it struck a deal with Novell. Rather than pay Novell, it agreed to hand out SUSE Linux coupons to consumers. It stayed at arms length from distributing the code… But did Microsoft circumvent the trap of GPLv2 by stepping into the snare of GPLv3?"

Heads up! Some new patent applications have just been posted on the Peer to Patent Project website, including one from Microsoft, its first entry in the project, on a kind of system I think of as a DRM'd computerized bean counter which tracks all the media clips bought and sold in the offline system of the invention, and then pays copyright holders and their ex-filesharing pirate distributors.

Late last week, Gray Knowlton wrote a lengthy blog comment, sharing some of this thoughts about my review of the Microsoft white paper "Accessibility of Ecma Office Open XML File Formats" that Gray posted to the OpenXML Developer website.

Microsoft denies that it has anything to do with GPLv3 or vice versa. Novell, however, is making it clear that it will be supporting SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in the future, including any components, such as future versions of Samba, that are licensed under GPLv3.