Eric van der Vlist's posted a piece on Microsoft's Office 11 announcements at XML 2002. I see that it's been noted on an Advogato diary already, so maybe I won't get shot at for suggesting people take a look, but this is some very interesting work, well-worth examining whatever your feelings about its creators. Eric does a nice job of contemplating the consequences for better and worse.

I gave a presentation at the Open Source Conference two years ago called "Open Source, Open Data: What XML has to offer Open Source". At the time, .NET (and the now-quiet "Hailstorm") was the main Microsoft data opening, but I think a lot of it applies as much or more to the Office story. There should be a lot more "free love" out there in the near future, though that's certainly different from "free speech" in the Open Source sense.