[Ghitulescu]

Unfortunately, there was no intention from Microsoft to finalize things.

Historically they may suggest they intend to finish the things, for instance to set legal values for the myriad of RESERVED fields and values all over their data structures, but they never did this. They simply created a new, usually incompatible format, and went along.

I don't know why hello_hello considers that particular sequence to be THE ONE, namely FL, FR, FC, LFE, BL, BR, when some of the first creators of a multi channel sound files, eg Dolby, specified a different order, namely L, C, R, BL, BR, LFE in 1991, when Microsoft just finished to set the RIFF adaptation to WAV.

So, once again, Microsoft comes 2007 and stir the standards to a new assignment (when she realised multichannel audio is the future). Why did she this? Because she could. Microsoft showed people that she'll not obey other party standards but her own. That's the power of a (quasi)monopole. Those that impose the rules always win.

Concerning the HW players and unusual channel configurations. Well, these had no problems to map correctly the channels, as no Microsoft "imagination" was involved in this. A DVD-Audio player would play 4.1 files perfectly (L,R,LFE,Ls,Rs). A computer relying on Microsoft code and formats would have a problem, unless the programmers managed to get workarounds (like custom channel mapping and stuff).