The following clip was dumped onto YouTube just 9 hours ago. The Commission's ruling is due tomorrow.



For those who cannot watch the video, the segment which begins a minute and a half after the start says that Europe is unimpressed by Microsoft's quantity of documentation. It requires quality. This is particularly relevant not only because of Novell's (let alone Linux) discussion about protocols and interoperability, but also because of OOXML, which introduces similar issues.

Microsoft is said to have dumped over 30,000 pages of documentation on the EC a few months ago. This was reported by Market Watch. Such complex documents overwhelm those who try to criticise because any criticism can then be described as "nitpicking" (on a proportional scale). To a company that wishes to implement compatible software, this is akin to a denial-of-service attack. The documentation is overly complicated because there is no reuse of existing standards, which makes it hard to reuse free open source components and have systems properly integrated. Other concerns involve cost, legal risk, technical changes, and decentralised control.

Update: here is a more recent video which talks about Monday's decision.