OpenDocument Challenge to Microsoft Open Specification Promise

Our decision in the 1990s to release Globus software as open source has resulted in me learning far more than I ever thought I'd need to know about the law. I suspect that not all readers know as much as they should about the licensing issues involved in both open standards and open source software. That is unfortunate, because there are subtleties that can result in confusion, uncertainty, and even liability. In this regard, I found a recent posting by the OpenDocument Foundation of interest. It certainly convinced me that I don't understand as much as I thought I did about these issues. I'm glad that we've adopted the standard Apache v2 license for Globus software.

The OpenDocument Foundation posting follows: