Open XML Complain from Britain

BECTA ( British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) recently filed a complaint to European Commission against Microsoft with regards with their Open XML interoperability issues.

Prior to this, BECTA already filed a complain last October 2007 to the UK competition regulator – the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in the following grounds:

• anti-competitive licensing practices by Microsoft in the schools software marketplace
• the existence of impediments to effective interoperability in relation to Microsoft’s Office 2007 product.

According to Dr. Stephen Lucey, Becta’s Executive Director of Strategic Technologies, “It is not just the interests of competitors and the wider marketplace that are damaged when barriers to effective interoperability are created. Such barriers can also damage the interests of education and training organisations, learners, teachers and parents. therefore very much welcome the decision by the Commission to conduct a wide ranging investigation.”

For more details about this complain, please click here.