Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Eurocrats study Microsoft OOXML under procurement rules
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | THE EUROPEAN Commission has started investigating Microsoft's OOXML
> | standard under procurement rules instead of the old competition statute
> | with which they usually bash the software giant.
> |
> | The Danish Unix User Group (DKUUG) complained to the EC's competition
> | regulators in February about a Danish government mandate on the use of
> | software standards. But the Competition lot didn't want to know about
> | it.
> |
> | The European Commission confirmed today that its Internal Market people
> | had taken up the complaint. They were examining it to see if it
> | constituted an infringement of procurement rules.
> |
> | [...]
> |
> | It was based, as originally, on the idea that Ecma International, the
> | standards body that backed OOXML, had specified that the standard was to
> | be implemented "in a way that is fully compatible with the large
> | existing investments in Microsoft Office documents."
> |
> | This meant that it was designed to give Microsoft documents an
> | advantage, said, Simonsen, in the same way a television manufacturer
> | might have an advantage over its rivals if had designed a signal that
> | was tuned to operate special features on its own sets.
> |
> | The EC's procurement police are now considering whether this puts the
> | Danish government in breach of procurement rules, despite the moves
> | Microsoft has made to make its standard acceptable.
> `----
>
> http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/24
eurocrats-study-microsoft-ooxml
The same arguments apply in the UK and all the idiots that
backed OOXML when they should not have. There are express rules
forbidding this kind of indirect sponsorship of private companies
and their products from within government which is what all these
organisations have engaged in.
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