February 21, 2008 3:10 PM PST
The EU turns up its nose at Microsoft's openness pledge
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).
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
