Today I had lunch with Microsoft's Jean Paoli (co-creator of XML) and Craig Shank, the general manager of Microsoft's interoperability group. Jean is the technical guy and focuses on lower-level work; Craig sets up plugfest and determines
Microsoft's participation in standards groups.
They did not come to discuss any big news, but they did reiterate that Microsoft has a structured approach to "pragmatic interoperability" that enables scenarios that its customers are asking for. They provided me with numerous examples of Microsoft's work to share documentation for its products and protocols, as well as its lab work with its competitors—most of which I had already heard.
Paoli indirectly responded to recent criticism that Microsoft was engaged in a FUD campaign against ODF (I forgot what the criticism was exactly) by pointing out that Office 2007 adds support for the format, and that Microsoft has included ODF in its developers' tooling and plug fests.
He also stated that Microsoft would not add secret sauce on top of standards (Windows Azure comes to mind). He told me that people were making the same accusations when Microsoft built its XML parser, but that in the end, Microsoft didn't change XML. I will be writing more about my conversation with Microsoft tomorrow.