Prompt's TechBlog

The Open Source Consortium (OSC) is threatening the BBC with referral to the European Commission because the BBC's forthcoming iPlayer will only support Microsoft Windows. The OSC argues that the move is anti-competitive, and since the EC is no friend of Microsoft, this could be one that runs and runs.

The BBC says it has a remit to reach as many people as possible with its content, and implies that this means they should use Microsoft because it's the dominant operating system. But the demand for software is derived from the demand for content. If the BBC exclusively supported open source software and formats, people would switch to them to access the content. If people want to get BBC content and don't have the supported software, it's going to be a massive (and expensive) change to switch to Windows. If open source was supported, they could just download a compatible player for their operating system (including Mac OS, Linux and Windows) without cost. That would surely be the best way to make content as widely available as possible, and to be 'platform agnostic', which the BBC claims it already is.