thanks to join th conversation. It looks like if you have a lot to say about it, I will ask you more to write a post if you don’t mind.

Is it ok with you?

The answer is none.

Because artefacts is exactly what Microsofts proprietary APIs and data formats become if solutions are either build as hosted environments (Google), or based on open standards (many open source projects), or hosted or inhouse at the customers discretion and built on open standards (Open-Xchange).

So it makes a lot of sense for Microsoft to release as much as possible into the open, before it can become a legacy that costs them money to maintain. And at the same time, with the same decision, complement their farce of a standard - ooxml, which is going through heavy turbulences right now anyway - with a backup strategy.

What that means for the IT market in general is that Microsoft stacks become incrementally more open to integrate with. And open to integrate with in two ways: a)
to have ISVs pay license fees to Microsoft if they want to use the newly released APIs. Fair is fair, access to markets is an assett worthwhile selling. b) for free for open source projects. What makes b) interesting is that via an open source project, not for profit, sponsored by company xyz etc. it now becomes possible to have data reside in non-Microsoft associated repositories. For free. With open source. And no inhibition to service this open source plumbing.

And this means that integration with customer data hawked by Microsoft software has just become a little easier. First and foremost for those customers who have their data locked away from themselves by Microsoft.