The EU turns up its nose at Microsoft's openness pledge

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Red Hat wasn't impressed by Microsoft's pledge to open up its APIs and protocols. This isn't surprising. More surprising, however, is the EU's dismissal of Microsoft's announcement:

The commission would welcome any move towards genuine interoperability. Nonetheless, the commission notes that today's announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability.

The devil is always in the details, but it is the European Commission and the open-source community pushes Microsoft to live up to its pledge that it will do so...kicking and screaming at times, no doubt. Still, I'm cautiously optimistic that it can be prodded toward that end (and that there are people within Microsoft who would love to get there sooner rather than later).