Washington Post: U.S. Settlement Leaves Microsoft More Entrenched

"The proposed agreement's more promising terms apply not to computer manufacturers but to independent software developers. The deal would require Microsoft to document all its applications programming interfaces, or APIs -- the ways programs work with Windows itself -- as well as some of its networking protocols.

That's a fine start. But the agreement fails to tackle Microsoft's other big leverage point -- its proprietary file formats.

"The reason I can't walk into an organization and say 'I'm going to use my Linux box' is that people will send me Word documents that I can't read," said Jeremy Allison, co-author of the Samba cross-platform networking program."

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