Not much has changed. If anything, the latest announcements from Microsoft validate all suspicions that Microsoft want everyone to play by its own rules and pay for the privilege.

OSBC 2008 has already begun and Microsoft's prominent involvement started to show. We are yet to address this.

In the mean time, here is one good pick from Dana Blankenhorn.

Microsoft is playing good cop, bad cop, offering “to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice” on the one hand, dismissing efforts to build real standards on the other.

Specifically, it provided documentation allowing developers to link with its MS-XAML, an XML schema for embedding applications, while dismissing Google’s OpenSocial initiative, and having its little friend, Facebook, do so as well.

[...]

Choice in this case means there’s a Microsoft way to do things and the highway’s way of doing things.

There's no better time to bring up this old quote:

"We want to own these standards, so we should not participate in standards groups. Rather, we should call 'to me' to the industry and set a standard that works now and is for everyone's benefit. We are large enough that this can work."

--Microsoft Corporation, internal memo (source [compressed PDF])

Related articles:

• Years of deadlock on EU patent bring some new thinking
• Leaked letter warns of open source 'threat to eco-system'

We will shortly return to OOXML, which has a lot to do not with Novell directly, but everything to do with Novell-type patent deals. It's the beginning of a broader strategy. ⬆