hi,
As noticed on The H http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Microsoft-wants-to-participate-in-SVG-development-897017.html
Patrick Dengler Senior Program Manager Internet Explorer Team has posted that Microsoft wants to join the SVG working group. You can see his blog at
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/01/05/microsoft-joins-w3c-svg-working-group.aspx

Perhaps within this decade IE may support svg? Perhaps Microsoft may request changes in the svg standard which would mean that Inkscape would need to be changed also. This is something that needs to be followed or even pursuing? Would Microsoft give money to a group implementing svg such as Inkscape?

Wow, definitely a lot of issues to disect!
What I like about it, is that now MS will have no excuse not to support SVG in IE.

Ars Technica has a good story on this also - http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2 ... mpaign=rss

It goes to show how healthy competition is in the web market. MS used to dictate how the web was used, now it has to negotiate if it wishes to be relevant.