Microsoft is submitting its Office 12 document formats such as Word and Excel to a European standards body (ECMA - they also manage the JavaScript "standard", btw)
Good news for anyone trying to improve workflow with Office documents. Another long time coming move, and it reeks of serious desperation, I think.
I'm guessing MSFT will probably try to limit use of the formats with some evil licensing terms, but as they used to say back in the mid-90's: "Information wants to be free"
via Search Views