full-disclosure - Microsoft Volume Licensing infringement?

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Message-ID: <20060131005332.GA1533@linux.unixwiz.net>
Date: Tue Jan 31 00:53:46 2006
From: steve at unixwiz.net (Steve Friedl)
Subject: Microsoft Volume Licensing infringement?

On Mon, Jan 30, 2006 at 06:15:23PM -0600, Randall M wrote:
> Anyone on here get an email from MS volume licensing services stating that
> all XP office and 2003 professional needs updated to remove the 3rd party
> Patent infringement?

Yes, its seems to be the real deal. I can't find the announcement on
Microsoft's site, but this one is representative of the ones I've seen.

	http://www.msd.uga.edu/announcement.php?news_item_id=1050

	Microsoft Office: Action Required

	(01-27-06) - Background and Summary

	A recent decision from a court case has determined that
	certain portions of code found in Microsoft Office Professional
	Edition 2003, Microsoft Office Access 2003, Microsoft Office
	XP Professional and Microsoft Office Access 2002 infringe a
	third-party patent.  As a result, Microsoft must make available
	a revised version of these products with the allegedly infringing[*]
	code replaced.

	...

It references a KB article on the Microsoft site which talks about Office
SP2 removing certain features:

	http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/904953/

	...
	Because of legal issues, Microsoft has disabled the functionality in
	Access 2003 and in Access 2002 that let users change the data in linked
	tables that point to a range in an Excel workbook. However, when you
	make changes directly in the Excel workbook, the changes appear in
	the linked table in Access.

Volume licensees are *required* to install Office SP2 with new deployments,
but are only *requested* to do so for existing deployments. I'm not sure
that they can require anybody else to do this, though bundling the "fix"
in with other stuff which was released months ago means that lots of people
probably have it by now.

I think this undermines a lot of the perceived benefits of Microsoft's
indemnification, which is one of their features over open source. It
doesn't mean they'll go to the mat for the users, it just means that
they'll quietly disable functionality and tell us about it we've installed
the service pack containing the disablement.

Anybody can do *that*.

Steve

[*] Seen elsewhere: "allegedly infringing"? If a court ruled, it's not "alleged"
    any more.

--- 
Stephen J Friedl | Security Consultant |  UNIX Wizard  |   +1 714 544-6561
www.unixwiz.net  | Tustin, Calif. USA  | Microsoft MVP | steve@...xwiz.net