In a major turnaround for Microsoft, the company Thursday promised "greater transparency" in its development and business practices, outlining a new strategy to provide more access to APIs and previously proprietary protocols for some of its major software products, including Windows and Office.

"The changes mandated by the European Commission in Microsoft's interoperability licences will continue to block Open Source developers, legal experts on this type of software say..."

Microsoft may have won a year-long quest to make its Office Open XML document format an ISO-recognised international standard, but claims of foul play in the voting process may come back to haunt the software giant when the European Commission concludes its latest antitrust investigation of Microsoft's business practices.

The European Commission confirmed it has received a complaint about Microsoft's business practices from a British government agency Tuesday, but isn't following it up as it normally would with an antitrust complaint, according to a press officer.

After hearing Microsoft's pledge to open the code for many of its applications and perusing at least some of the first documentation, reaction in the open-source community is varied.

In a document published last week, the EC states among others that the Commission will prefer Open Source software for its new IT projects: "For all new development, where deployment and usage is foreseen by parties outside of the Commission Infrastructure, Open Source Software will be the preferred development and deployment platform."

Microsoft's Patent Attorney Jim Markwith told the Open Source Business Conference that the reason they hadn't named the supposedly infringing patents was that it would be 'administratively impossible to keep up' with the list.

A group of states led by California said in a court filing Thursday that ending oversight of Microsoft's business practices in November would not allow enough time to consider the antitrust implications of Windows Vista

The European Commission will take a more pro-active approach to its own use of Open Source and Open Standards. Xavier Heymans highlights the importance of a real and mature collaboration with communities where IT providers share their developments and adopt an "open source" philosophy.