U.K. Education Group Escalates Microsoft Complaints

##AUTHORSPLIT##<--->

A consultancy to the U.K. government has forwarded complaints about Microsoft's licensing and interoperability practices to the European Commission (EC), according to an announcement issued by the Becta consulting group Monday.

Becta, or the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, helps the U.K. government with technology decision-making for thousands of U.K. schools and colleges. Its charges to the EC echo complaints about Microsoft's educational licensing agreements, as well as the interoperability of Microsoft's XML file formats, that the group first filed with the U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading back in October.

A press officer for the EC commented that the EC isn't treating Becta's complaint as a formal antitrust complaint, according to an IDG News Service story. However, the EC has been engaged since January in investigating interoperability issues surrounding Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document formats, which are used in the Microsoft Office 2007 software suite.

OOXML was ratified as an international standard by the ISO/IEC organizations in April. Currently, two international standards for document formats exist: OOXML (ISO/IEC 29500) and Open Document Format (ISO/IEC 26300). ODF is backed by Microsoft's competing vendors, including Sun Microsystems and IBM, both of which offer free office productivity suite solutions, similar in functionality to Microsoft Office.

Becta issued a statement when OOXML was approved that teachers and parents "would best be served by a single standard which accommodated the existing Open Document Format specification." However, ISO's FAQ on the matter seems to disagree with that position, stating that "After a period of co-existence, it is basically the market that decides which [standard] survives."

Currently, Becta is recommending to the U.K. educational community that it not deploy Microsoft Office 2007. Also, it recommends that users should save files in the older .doc, .xls and .ppt formats until OOXML is compatible with ODF.

Becta typically doesn't file competition complaints, according to Steven Lucey, Becta's executive director of strategic technologies.

"Intervention via the competition authorities is not our preferred approach," Lucey said in a prepared statement. "Ideally we prefer to address interoperability issues by working in close partnership with the wider industry."

An agency that handles Microsoft's press relations, Waggener-Edstrom, was contacted for this story but a representative did not respond by press time.

Get daily news from THE Journal's RSS News Feed


About the author: Kurt Mackie is Web editor of RCPmag.com and ADTmag.com. He can be reached at [email protected].

Proposals for articles and tips for news stories, as well as questions and comments about this publication, should be submitted to David Nagel, executive editor, at [email protected].

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is online news editor, Enterprise Group, at 1105 Media Inc.

Featured

  • split-screen digital illustration of two AI-influenced classrooms

    What AI Gets Right and How It Will Be Used in the Year Ahead

    AI has tremendous potential to do good in education while honoring and upholding the essential role of teachers. However, its success will depend on how we choose to use it.

  • outline of a modern school building as glowing blue geometric shapes, surrounded by binary code streams, with golden orbs and lines representing funding, set against a dark gray gradient with faint grid patterns

    FCC Cybersecurity Pilot Participants Selected

    The Federal Communications Commission has officially selected the participants for its Schools and Libraries Cybersecurity Pilot, the three-year program exploring the use of Universal Service funds to improve school and library defenses against cyber attacks.

  • SXSW EDU

    3 Opportunities to Get Hands-on with AI at SXSW EDU 2025

    This March 3-6 in Austin, TX, the SXSW EDU Conference & Festival celebrates its 15th year of exploring the most critical issues in education and providing a forum for creativity, innovation, and expression.

  • Two digital hands made of interconnected lines and nodes shaking hands firmly against a minimal technological background

    IBM to Acquire AI and Data Solutions Provider DataStax

    IBM has announced the planned acquisition AI and data solutions provider DataStax, in a move aimed at enhancing its watsonx portfolio and advancing generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for enterprises.