Great buzz around the announcement in Paris that Microsoft is to submit its XML Office document format to an international standards board. The hope is to fast-track the process so that it will be in the public domain by the time Office 12 is released next year.

As with all things Redmondy though, the questions come thick and furious. When Talleyrand died, Napoleon was heard to remark, “What did he mean by that?” And so it is now. Are these formats really open? How do I know that there isn’t some sort of hidden Microsoft agenda? Why is Microsoft doing this? And those were questions from Microsoft’s own blogging evangelist, Robert Scoble.

It was also pointed out that by doing this the company may lose control of backward compatibility during the updating process which will transfer to a standards board. That compatibility is what persuades existing users to upgrade to newer versions of the Office suite. It also seems unlikely that Microsoft will fully support the OpenDocument format called for by the European Union in May 2004.

In the aftermath of the Massachusetts decision to back OpenDocuments, Microsoft must feel like a turkey having its feathers shot off one by one. Each small compromise serves to downgrade its proprietary formats as sources of revenue, so it must hope to expand the market to the extent that a smaller market share will still increase its income. It really is circling the wagons time at the House Bill Gates built.