EU competition chief advocates open standards - NetworkWorld.com

Europe's competition commissioner Neelie Kroes delivered a thinly veiled warning to Microsoft Tuesday that the software system giant's
behind-the-scenes maneuverings to procure industrywide criterion position for its written document format, Office Open XML earlier this
twelvemonth "risk falling disgusting of the competition rules."

She also appeared to back unfastened software system criteria in a address given during a conference on standardisation hosted by the
IT industry grouping Open Forum Europe. Don't Miss!

"Choosing unfastened criteria is a very smart concern determination indeed," she told attendees.

She didn't advert Microsoft by name once in her speech, but the 25 minute-long delivery was littered with mentions to the
software system system giant's former pattern of withholding interoperability information about its close omnipresent software merchandises and
its year-long campaign to procure ISO (International Organization for Standardization) criterion position for OOXML. Related Content

Standards are "the foundation of interoperability," she said, acknowledging that they can be both proprietorship and non-proprietary.

After pointing out the of import function proprietorship criteria played in developing Europe's 2nd and third-generation mobile
telephone technologies, she went on to warn that criteria developed and desired by one marketplace participant only can be "problematic,
having none of the precautions of revelation that criteria organic structures typically require."

In a jabbing at the ISO determination to allow OOXML criterion status, Kroes said "I neglect to see the involvement of consumers in including
proprietary engineering in criteria when there are no clear and demonstrable benefits over non-proprietary alternatives."

"If vote in the standard-setting linguistic context is influenced less by the technical virtues of the technology, but rather by side
agreements, inducements, bundle deals, inverse agreements, or commercial pressure level then these hazard falling disgusting of the
competition rules," Kroes said.

Other talkers at the conference were more than direct in their unfavorable judgment of Microsoft's behaviour and ISO's determination to approve
OOXML.

Christian Ude, the metropolis manager of Munich, a city in southern Federal Republic Of Germany that have embraced open-source software system throughout its operations,
said that by granting OOXML criterion position "it would look this doesn't advance competition, it might even blockade it." 1

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.