More woes for the bbcs microsoft tie-in.
seems the BBC is in more troubles over its iplayer system, there is of course the issue of the supposed £20 million being spent on it so far but of more interest to the free-software/non-microsoft crowd is the controversies over the inoperability of the iplayer on non-microsoft systems
of note is a letter from MP Dr. John Pugh. to the director general of the BBC Mark Thompson:
“The more fundamental issue is its failure to apply open standards and be sufficiently interoperable to work fully (streaming and download) on more than one platform. The BBC is funded by licence players not all of whom have or chose to use a computer running Windows XP or Vista. By guaranteeing full functionality to the products of one software vendor it is as a public body handing a commercial advantage to that company — effectively illegal state aid!”
which is a good point (how valid it is has yet to be worked out) but is the kind of thing that could lead to sanctions by the EU. also of note is that the BBC is saying that people prefer the flash technology to the downloadable ms only version by a factor of 8:1, which is always good news (even if it is only the lesser of two evils).
the transcript of the latest hearing of the BBC with the Parliament is interesting reading too (if you can ctrl-f to find keywords that are interesting ;))
