From the Free Software Foundation - Europe

Microsoft pledge excluding primary competitors.

Yesterday's media briefing by Microsoft on its its pledge to release
interoperability information for flagship products contained little
actual news. Over the years Microsoft has made multiple similar pledges
and they at times proved to be detrimental rather than beneficial for
interoperability. Examining the terms of the Microsoft's latest action
shows no major change of policy.

The announcement confirmed that Microsoft was planning to use its
software patent portfolio against interoperating products by requiring
a patent license for all commercial activity. This is consistent with
its previous attempts at allowing competition only where it provides no
actual challenge to its monopolies.

Microsoft's patent licences are incompatible with Free Software, the
primary competitor to Microsoft in many markets. Almost all major
competitors have made significant investments in Free Software and
built substantial parts of their business on the principles of freedom
of competition and innovation.

Free Software's freedoms to use, study, share and improve software
without additional restrictions are key to the success and utility of
Free Software in both commercial and non-commercial ICT infrastructure.
They are also the basis for many of today's working examples of
interoperability and competition.

Microsoft's announcement contains little more than a statement that
they will support interoperability only under terms that disallow fair
competition. Their press statements may indicate otherwise, but terms
of release highlight this explicitly. There has never been a shortage
of promises by Microsoft, but results are what must be considered
rather than words.

Regrettably, the lack of substance in the pledge and the timing suggest
that Microsoft is primarily hoping for positive media coverage and not
an examination of the substance of their limited interoperability
release.

It can be no coincidence that delegates are meeting in Geneva for the
Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) during this period to discuss serious
issues in the proposed MS-OOXML format[1], through which Microsoft aims
to reaffirm their control over standards in the global marketplace[2].

If Microsoft truly means to facilitate interoperability and fair access
they should spare delegates the BRM, retract MS-OOXML from ISO and
converge this work into the global effort for the Open Document Format,
the existing Open Standard at ISO for office documents.

They should also release full interoperability information for all
their products without restrictions of any kind.

[1] http://www.france.fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-idiosyncrasies.en.html
[2] http://news.zdnet.co.uk/leader/0,1000002982,39292519,00.htm