de Icaza has repeated the classic mistake that has killed so many commercial companies - he thinks he can "partner" with Microsoft.

Microsoft has said two things:

1. "This is a ringing endorsement of .NET."
   
2. "He will need our intellectual property to make it work, and if he uses our intellectual property he must license under our terms."

I think that's pretty clear. I have no reason to doubt their word, do you?

They already have what the want from de Icaza, a "ringing endorsement from the Open Source community" - Thank you Mr. de Icaza, you can go home now.

ECMA? They're playing the fool as well. Microsoft will squeeze their standards submittal for every inch of milage they can get, and when things don't go smoothly they'll shift the blame to ECMA. Microsoft has a big PR budget, ECMA doesn't.

If ECMA ever does get a standard out, you can bet Microsoft's .NET servers don't comply. They'll have something extra and proprietary which de Icaza will have to license if he wants his stuff to work with Microsoft servers, and if it doesn't work with Microsoft servers, it just isn't .NET, is it?