Microsoft's officials mentioned that the company is going to apply the Open Document Format (ODF), "sometime next year".

"It's a step in the right direction but we are skeptical about how open Microsoft will be," commented the representatives of the Free Software Foundation Europe.

"The Commission would welcome any step that Microsoft took towards genuine interoperability, more consumer choice and less vendor lock-in," said the European Commission, which welcomed Microsoft's decision. It is worth mentioning that earlier the EC has fined the software giant accusing it for monopolistic practice.

EC representatives mentioned that they are going to check if the announcement of the company "leads to better interoperability and allows consumers to process and exchange their documents with the software product of their choice". According to Microsoft, it looks forward to add support for ODF after updating Microsoft Office 2007 in 2009.

Representatives of the Open Document Format Alliance are still skeptical about Microsoft's commitment to implement use of ODF.

"The proof will be whether and when Microsoft's promised support for ODF is on par with its support for its own formats. Governments will be looking for actual results, not promises in press releases," said Marino Marcich, who holds the position of managing director of the ODF Alliance.

Microsoft decided to implement use of Open Document Format with the goal of following its attempts to use its own standard, called OpenXML, which has been approved by the International Standards Organization. However, the full specification of Microsoft's format is still to be published.

"Support for ODF indicates there are problems with OpenXML that Microsoft cannot resolve easily and quickly. OpenXML is something all users want to stay away from. It's not clear if it will ever become an interoperable standard and so users should be very careful using it," said Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe. He added that "genuine adoption" of ODF would offer consumers more choice.

"People will no longer need to use Microsoft Office in order to interoperate. They will no longer need to choose a support platform for Office, i.e. Windows. There will be full choice on the desktop; people could switch to Linux and choose Open Office or other applications that support ODF, like Lotus Symphony or Google Docs," he added.