Sun "sells" Open Office to Microsoft?

[bscott at ntisys.com]

  Coming into this a bit late, but knowledge seems to a bit scarce around
this thread, so:

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004, at 12:08pm, michael.odonnell at comcast.net wrote:
>  http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20040914141417417

  Ho-hum.  IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that agreement (the referenced
document in the SEC filing) is part of the Sun/Microsoft Java settlement.  
The Sun/MS Java fight makes the IBM/SCO thing look like a school-yard
shoving match.  After something close to a decade of litigation, both sides
have finally agreed to stop suing each other for everything imaginable.  
This agreement appears to be part of that.

  The bits about Open Office (Section IV) appear to be a statement that
while Microsoft agrees not to sue Sun over Open Office, Microsoft reserves
the right to sue anybody else over Open Office.  So no change.  Again,
ho-hum.

  The discussion elsewhere about "Open Office" vs "OpenOffice.org" is a red
herring; this document references OpenOffice.org implicitly ("generally
known").  The reason OpenOffice.org insists on OpenOffice.org is that some
*other* company already had a claim to the mark "OpenOffice".  Or so OO.org
has been claiming for years:

	http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/faq-other.html#6

  You can read each side's propaganda about the Sun/MSFT Java fight on their
web sites:

	http://www.sun.com/lawsuit/

	http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/java/

  Yes, the 1 April 2004 date is legitimate, and not a joke.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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