Copy right?
 

Hey guys, I was at work last night talking to one of my co-workers about programing. I said somthing about making a word processing program to do my home work on because i am tired of Word. He mentiond something about not beeing able to save and open documents as files for Word (.doc I do belive?) any way i said i was going to try to make it capable of opening those documents for editing. he then ask if that would be leagle because he thought it was copyrighted by microsoft. I replied that it was perfectly leagle and continued on my way. however at about 4:00Am when i wen't on break and started working on flow charts the question began to eat at me so i figured i would ask you guys . Is there a copyright on it? and is there a website to view information on things you can not put in your programms?

Edit: and a second question: I am majoring in CIS my Jr. or Sr. Year I have to pick a specialized path. I want to do web page design and programming. If i pursue that filed and then decide i would like to be doing windows application programming or somthing like that could i still do it withought having to go back to school? I would already know the languages i would be working in so would the fact that my degree is in CIS hold through or would it fall out that for the last two years i did only web?

If there was a copyright issue on the DOC format, then OpenOffice folks would have been sued by now. Carry on...

I would look at your CIS degree as a whole... if you specialize in programming, then you should be able to write windows applications after graduation. Programming is basically the same across the board, just different languages have different uses / syntax. I'd be more worried about ability to solve abstract problems on time and under budget. :)

Copyright means that you can't duplicate someone's creative work without their permission. This doesn't apply to file formats.

However, patents do apply, and you may fall foul of one of them if you're in a country that allows software patents. Realistically though, OpenOffice is likely to be the first hit by any potential patent issues, and attacking such a prominent software project would not be without it's risks for Microsoft, especially when it's in the middle of trying to get OOXML accepted as an ISO standard.

The difficulty with reading Word docs is more technical than legal: the doc file format is notoriously convoluted, not officially undocumented, and so hard to implement that no software project has yet succeeded in emulating every part of it. Even OpenOffice messes up the formatting of complex Word docs.

Thanks guys. I did not think it would be but my co-worker got the idea planted in my head so i thought i better check.

@Infinite Recursion Thanks for the insite on the degree. I feel a lot less woried now, I really want to do Web stuff but i din't want to cut off my chances of beeing an aplication programmer.

I hate propriety. My car is so proprietary I can't even change the spark plugs.