Microsoft's announcement on Wednesday that it intends to share communications-protocol-related source code with folks willing to sign license agreements met with mixed reactions. The companies who were behind the European Commission's decision to bring its antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in the first place and other competitors were largely unimpressed by Microsoft's latest concession. But other company watchers found a lot to like in Microsoft's source-code-sharing plans, wondering why the Redmond software vendor didn't think of such a scheme before now.