Whilst I'm sure there are going to be impacts to the likes of you and me, I'm failing to see what they are.

1. "we're committing to ensure open connections for our high volume products".

As far as I know there are technologies available that enable virtually any other development technology to interact with SQL Server (e.g. OLE DB)

2. "we're committing to promote data portability for our high volume products"

To me, data portability means "moving data from one place to another". I don't see anything in SQL Server that prohibits that.

3. "we're committing to enhancing Microsoft's support for industry standards"

ANSI SQL? I thought T-SQL supported it pretty well. Admittedly there are extensions are the DB purists may moan about that, but by-and-large I don't see SQL Server doing anything wrong here. Are there industry standards around ETL? OLAP? Data mining? Data queuing? The only one I can think of that comes close is MDX and Microsoft invented that (didn't they?).

4. "we're committing to fostering a more open engagement with industry, as well as the open source software community"

To be fair there do need to be improvements here. And that has already begun with the recent release of something that supports SQL Server integration with PHP.

I'm sure I'm being totally naive but I don't see how this is going to affect us.

-Jamie

I think this has been done to please the EU more than anything else (after all the YHOO deal won't go through if they don't approve it either)

This doesn't affect SQL people, web developers who have to hack code for IE, shops that use mixed environments with Linux, Mac and Windows will benefit from this mostly