Bill Gates has decided the only way for businesses for move forward is for software vendors to ensure their software operates correctly with other software (
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/exec...perability.asp).
Funny, certain people have been saying that (me, Richard M and other members of this forum for a start) for ages.
Reading through that article, it seems Microsoft is trying to claim credit for other people's technology working with their technology. The way I remember it is that other people (e.g. Apple & the various Linux vendors) have gone out of their way to make their technology with Microsoft, not the other way around.
I personally like the reply from Opera's CTO (another company who works hard for standardisation), which is at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02...rroperability/
It's also funny how the W3C page validator brings up 126 errors on Microsoft's article (above).
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...perability.asp