Slashdot | Microsoft Leaves U.N. Standards Group

Slashdot | Microsoft Leaves U.N. Standards Group "pk2000 writes "Microsoft withdrew from a United Nations software standards group for commerce." 'Unfortunately, for now, we have made the decision to stop participating in U.N./Cefact for business reasons and this serves as notification of our immediate withdrawal from all U.N./Cefact activities.' This might be connected to Microsoft's intention to build up its patent portfolio. Currently it has about 5,000 patents and seeks to at least double this number by the end of 2005.""

Being a Slashdot post, there can of course be no consideration of the remote possibility that the standards group in question, focused in part on ebXML, could be in an academic infinite loop; it must be some sort of nefarious Microsoft plot...