Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 09:36:12 -0800 From: jehamby@lightside.com (Jake Hamby) To: rb@gid.co.uk, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au Cc: jb@cimlogic.com.au, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, terry@lambert.org Subject: Re: MIME applications for FreeBSD Message-ID: <199702131736.JAA11713@lightside.com>
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Michael Smith says: > Bob Bishop stands accused of saying: > > > > They certainly don't seem to. Maybe reverse engineering is unnecessary: > > WordPad groks Word 6 format, and the source is in among the samples on the > > MSVC4.2 CD. > > Hmm! Not that I'm too enamoured of WordPad, but is this source in anything > like a distributable form? If someone with a Willows Twin/XPDK license > were to cut a set of binaries, could they distributethem? Probably not. I believe Microsoft sample source is licensed under the condition that you must add "substantial value" to it before you can distribute it as your own. In other words, they probably wouldn't mind if you used the guts of WordPad as some other program, but if they found out you were redistributing a recompiled copy of WordPad itself, they could probably sue. BTW, Microsoft has freely distributable Word Viewer and Powerpoint Viewer binaries whose sole purpose is to view those types of documents. I'm sure they run under WABI, and probably WINE too. I would hope that MS updates these to recognize the Office 97 formats, and still supports the 16-bit versions (at least until WINE and WABI can run Win32 apps reliably). Of course if somebody sends you a fill-out form as an office document, you're still screwed. And if you can get WordPad going, you'll probably be screwed on complex documents (esp. those with embedded OLE). > > Also 3rd-party converters between Word6 and <what you like> are available > > (and referenced in MS developer materials). Maybe the developers had to pay > > a fat licence fee. > > Applixware claims to support MSWord format, and appears to be on a > runout special for US$189 (US$69 student > price). http://www.linuxmall.com Perhaps they had to pay a fee, perhaps they simply reverse engineered it? My copy of WordPerfect 6 for UNIX does a _lousy_ job of importing Word 6 documents (it won't even recognize most of them), and that's only because I downloaded a newer converter from their FTP site (the original one didn't even try!). Hmm, I'd forgotten about Applixware, or for that matter StarOffice, which had a free beta version of their office suite available from SunSite the last I checked. StarOffice also makes Windows, OS/2 (and soon PowerMac and Solaris) versions, I believe. Their Web site is: http://www.stardiv.de/ but it's completely in German! -- Jake
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