Parsing the Microsoft – EU Interoperability Commitment

“Or that it wishes to have more implied control over the next
ISO version, since it has no obligation to implement it under the
proposed settlement? At the moment, I can’t think of a third
explanation, given that the EC apparently thought the question of
OOXML support was important enough to require specific language
covering OOXML support in the near term.

“Turning to the second question: how strong is the commitment to
implement ODF, and why should there be specific “outs” at all?
Irony aside (in light of the first approval round in ISO of OOXML),
the game-playing condition is superficially not unreasonable, but
who would make the judgment call over how much game-playing is too
much, especially given that a certain level of game playing is
rampant across so many strategic standard setting initiatives to
begin with. And, for the largest software company in the world, why
should difficulty enter into the equation? Note also that the next
version of ODF could be more difficult to implement not only
because ODF had changed, but because Office had changed as
well.”

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