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UK Agency Files OOXML Complaint, EU Demurs

Posted by kdawson on from the we-know-we-know-already dept.

Christopher Blanc writes to let us know that although BECTA, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, has filed a complaint with EU regulators about Microsoft's business practices, the European Commission won't be doing anything particular about it. BECTA claimed that the OOXML format discourages competition. BECTA lodged a similar complaint with the UK Office of Fair Trading last October. A Commission press officer said, "We are already looking into the issues raised in that complaint already and we are not treating it as a formal complaint to us."

5 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. some standards are more equal than others by mr_death · · Score: -1, Troll

    One doc standard, ODF, is cool; another, OOXML is somehow evil. A truly bizzare thought process.

    Of course, the French ruled that free shipping offered by Amazon is somehow unfair to French booksellers (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080115-amazons-free-shipping-costing-1000-per-day-in-france.html), so maybe this is just another Eurocrat implementing a "bash America" strategy.

    Flame away, my kevlar and asbestos suit is at the ready.

    --
    It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
  2. Translation by Cussin_IT · · Score: -1, Troll

    "We are already looking into the issues raised in that complaint already and we are not treating it as a formal complaint to us."

    Translation:
    "We got more money from MS to procrastinate than we did from you to see this through."

    --
    Read my blog you know you want to
  3. So let me get this right by TheRealSlimShady · · Score: 0, Troll

    So now making a document format a standard is anticompetitive? I'm confused. Wasn't it anticompetitive when the document format was closed?

    1. Re:So let me get this right by prockcore · · Score: 0, Troll

      One of the biggest problems with this "standard" is that it specifically allows proprietary add-ons.


      So why isn't this one of the biggest problems with ODF? ODF allows binary blobs.. it's right there in the standard.
  4. Re:Not a formal complaint? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Yeah, we need to pound those fuckers in their euroscum asses, right up the shitter, jamming our pulsing rods into their throbbing fuckholes.