Microsoft's PDF-killer heads towards standards body

[TadW]

Personally I don't believe it, but who knows... perhaps Microsoft is making an effort to release a decent document file format.

EU making XPS a better competitor?

For its part, Microsoft had previously indicated that its XPS technology would be licensed "royalty-free" to developers, and the company also promised a so-called "covenant not to sue" provision for businesses working on XPS print support, scanning technologies, and certain graphics display technologies.

However, at the behest of the EU, Microsoft is now taking matters a step further. A company spokesperson told Ars Technica that Microsoft "agreed to submit our new fixed-layout document format—the XML Paper Specification—to a standards-setting organization, and to revise the licensing terms on which the specification is made available to other software developers."

Link: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061015-7992.html