BBC Trust to meet OSC
Friday, July 13th, 2007BBC to hear open source concerns
The BBC Trust has offered to meet the Open Source Consortium over concerns that iPlayer, the upcoming software for watching past BBC shows online, will only be available to people using Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. This has been likened to the BBC launching a new channel which would only play on Panasonic televisions, and the failure to offer support for Linux and Macs has been widely criticised in those communities since the initial announcement.
The OSC has already threatened the BBC with a complaint to the European Commission, although at the time of writing no formal complaint has been lodged with the EC. Based on how long it usually takes the EC to take action, I doubt that the BBC Trust needed to worry about this, but the threat does seem to have achieved its desired effect.
Personally, I’m very glad to see some positive movement on this issue. I pay my licence fee every year and as such I expect to be able to use any service which is offered by the BBC, regardless of what operating system I choose to use (Linux most of the time, occasionally OS X and XP when I need to do certain things). The BBC is in a unique position in that it is not affected by commercial pressures in the same way as other broadcasters, and it must not be allowed to abuse that power by only allowing its services to work on certain platforms.