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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