During the LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco, I met with Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of open source and standards. We discussed document standards and the implications of ISO's controversial decision to grant fast-track approval to Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format.

Microsoft news from the beginning of the week.

Gates is now working to ensure youngsters in China are glued to Microsoft software.

Another timely explanation of the Silverlight/Olympics effect on GNU/Linux

Ordinarily I don't pay any more attention to Microsoft than I have to, but this was too funny to ignore: A Better View of Microsoft Security?; Microsoft to expand its Trustworthy Computing in a bid to help users and vendors understand security risks.

In short, we are in an adversarial situation. Microsoft does not want us to succeed. Thus we cannot trust Microsoft, even if we'd like to, and must consider Mono based upon the question "What is the worst thing MS can reasonably do?". We can only trust Mono if we are convinced Microsoft doesn't have weasel room. The current situation appears, to me, to have lots of weasel room.

The role of Mono and Novell in fulfilling Microsoft's desire to change GNU/Linux.