Creative Commons Add-In for Office Released 134
Ctrl+Alt+De1337 writes "Creative Commons has announced the release of an add-in to Microsoft Office that allows the easy addition of a CC license to files created with Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. It was co-developed by Microsoft and Creative Commons and only works in Office XP and Office 2003. It can be downloaded from Microsoft's download center after a validation check, and CNet has a screenshot available of the tool."
Re:Why do you need an add-in? (Score:4, Interesting)
Creative commons isn't a good thing (Score:2, Interesting)
Isn't this a little backwards? (Score:2, Interesting)
What good is an `open' license if the format in which it's published is closed and restrictive?
Re:it is a crock off shit (Score:2, Interesting)
I like how you started out with an assumption then expect other people to verify that assumption for you. Oh shit I mean.... rawr M$ is teh evil rofl mao
Re:After Validation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft has a problem - We hate them, and they fear us.
We have the techology to pirate their products, the motivation to do so even if we don't like using them, and the influence to convince others to either switch to Linux or use the pirated copies we give them rather than buying.
You'll notice that this only works in the two most recent versions of Office. Why, do you suppose, they chose not to include it in all of them? It has nothing to do with XML - All the older Office-native formats have the ability to store metadata (as various companies and governments occasionally discover when someone accidentally starts a "new" document by opening "supersecretespionageplan.doc", deleting everything they see, then saving and releasing the new "happyfunPRcampaign.doc" to the world.
No, they only use the new versions because they want us to update. And they want us to update to a far more restrictive version, that includes at least some smidgeon of DRM, whether online activation or Genuine (dis)Advantage or what-have-you.
Personally, on my machines that run Windows, I have Office 97. Not enough has changed to make cracking a new version worth the effort, and - Did you know, you don't need to install it? Nope - You can literally just copy the CD to your HDD, find "winword.exe" and the rest, and run them without corrupting the rest of your system (including, critically, the ability to do this as a non-admin user!). It will warn you (just once, not even as annoying as most shareware) that it needs repair every time you run it, but I have yet to find a feature actually broken from never bothering to formally install it.
Hmm, I've drifted a bit. Okay, I'll stop here.
Improper licensing - What if... (Score:4, Interesting)
You know why? (Score:5, Interesting)
I really think this is only just the beginning of a broader DRM tool.
Re:Please don't use this! (Score:1, Interesting)
What kind of guarntee is there that I will be any more able to open an OpenOffice file 10 years down the road than to open an Office XP file? OpenDocument is a standard, but standards come and go with time. How many bright-and-shining standards do you think have fallen by the wayside since Windows 95 came out just over 10 years ago?
Re:it is a crock off shit (Score:3, Interesting)
Hrm... Well, then how about these:
"Microsoft today announced the release of its Simple List Extensions specification to RSS under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license." (source [creativecommons.org])
"The Microsoft-hosted PatternShare community brings together information on software patterns organized by wiki inventor and now Microsoft employee Ward Cunningham." (source [creativecommons.org])
From Lawrence Lessig's blog: "So we have 10 days left in the Creative Commons campaign. This is not a drill. We are down to the last $100,000, and really need your support..." (source [lessig.org]) And then a few days later... "At 12:30pm, an envelope from Redmond appeared at the Creative Commons office. Inside, a check for $25,000. From Microsoft." (source [lessig.org])
And so forth [google.com]
Re:Improper licensing - What if... (Score:3, Interesting)
This has already happened many times. When George Romero released Night of the Living Dead, they forgot to put a copyright notice on the film [wikipedia.org]. The law back then stated that you must put a copyright notice on your work to maintain copyright. Because of this, this film is now in the public domain.
My example is a bit different, but the main point is this: once something is released to the public, anyone who receives the work gains all the rights of fair use, as well as any others that you give them. The status of your document would be whatever license it got released under. As for you, you would most likely be fired and/or sued for negligence or breach of contract.
Re:it is a crock off shit (Score:2, Interesting)
But with all that said, I intend to apply a Creative Commons license to ALL of *my* TPS reports, spreadsheets, and customer presentations that, on a good day, 6 people in the world actually care about.
Mash that up, bitches!
Re:Please don't use this! (Score:3, Interesting)
I was at least as concerned about the future as I was about today. And I've never been happy with the output of imported Word files in OpenOffice.org and other similar software; the formatting's usually screwy in some way or another. (Obviously, HTML/CSS formatting is different from one program to another, but HTML/CSS at least doesn't try to be WYSIWYG.) If the content is essentially textual so the loss of formatting doesn't matter
Regarding filetypes in future versions of Office, that is of no interest to whether or not you should be using this plugin. This plugin works with versions of Office that are available today that use the proprietry file type that is available today. When the next version is released and if it's file type is a nice compressed XML file that can be retrieved & understood easily by other software, then my statement might not hold, and I'll be the first to admit it. But that's not the case today, and you still should not use this plugin.
Re:Please don't use this! (Score:4, Interesting)
True, but the format is documented so any future software can easily implement it, preserving the same formatting as the publisher intended. The same cannot be said about Word in spite of your assertions (or at least, OpenOffice.org doesn't yet maintain Word document formatting precisely). There's also other formats available; if you're really concerned about long-term preservation, I'd recommend something like HTML or plain text (for documents in which the prime concern is information); or TeX (for documents [incl. ppt slides] in whch formatting is important). I realise that TeX isn't especially fun for newbies, so OpenOffice.org documents (which are human readable even without software designed for it) in conjunction with PDF or PostScript is probably a successful compromise.
Also, Word is not the only format in Microsoft Office. One other format likely to be used with this plugin is PowerPoint. As I'm studying for my exams and reading the PPT slides released by my lecturer, I can assure you that OpenOffice.org is far from perfect in importing those, too. Some slides are quite unreadable till I've spent a few minutes fiddling around with them.
(See also my response to your sibling [slashdot.org].)
PS: I think your attitude is quite common amongst Slashdotters, which is why I felt the need to express mine; I fear yours is in the majority. I doubt you need a flame-proof suit any more than I do.
PPS: Sorry about my tone/language, I'm in a funny mood right now and I've been reading stuff written in a funny way, so I can't quite get rid of it...