john,

I think we can take it as read that the fundamental difference in the two ..Open Source != Open Standards ... is well known by the Dutch.

MS must be being held over a pork barrel to be maintaining their intransigent position..... although presumably the thrill must do something for them or they wouldn't be so obtuse/obfuscatory/economical with the truth........ or at least be prey/party to the perception of it being so.

QuITe obviously an Executive Decision Failing.

The licenses from Microsoft that OSDL certified as Open Source licenses have nothing to do with MSOOXML. By that I mean that Microsoft is not proposing to license any implementation of MSOOXML under those licenses. 

It may well be that Microsoft is attempting to confuse nontechnical people by getting a Microsoft license blessed by OSDL, hoping they'll think that Microsoft Office must be open source, given the name Open Office XML and the existence of the OSDL-approved licenses, but Microsoft is not using those licenses for the Microsoft Office product.

The author may or may not be aware of that. In addition to applying to the ISO standards body MS is also applying to the OSDL for certification of at least one of it's licenses as Open Source. I would guess that would be the license covering Office Open XML.

The vole is cunning indeed and they are not going to hell quietly. If they can snivel their way into the OSDL and start calling themselves Open Source, they will.

Open source and open standards are two completely different things!