EU institutions accused of doing nothing to free themselves from dependence on Microsoft
The European Commission and European Parliament are doing nothing to rid themselves of their dependance on Microsoft, two lobby groups said Wednesday, Document Freedom Day.
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) andOpen Forum Europe urged EU institutions to support open standards in an open letter to Giancarlo Vilella, president of the European Parliaments Directorate-General for Innovation and Technological Support. He also chairs the body that coordinates IT activities for government agencies including Parliament, the Commission and the Council of the E.U.
The letter highlights several problems, including that video streams of Parliament and Council hearings are still only available in the proprietary Microsoft Windows Media Player and Silverlight formats. This prevents EU citizens who wish to participate in the legislative process from watching without being forced to use the products of a single company, the groups wrote.
The groups said they have been asking the Commission to adopt a more open or cross-platform video format since 2008.
Though they were told at the time that Parliament was working on a new system for streaming that would be built on open standards that would be accessible to all, nothing seems to have happened since. We would be interested to know if this project is still in development, they wrote.
Another problem they raised is the Commissions dependance on Microsoft as the single provider of its office automation software.
The Commission has admitted to this dependence in a response to written questions Pirate Party member of the European Parliament (MEP) Amelia Andersdotter sent in January to Catherine Day, the Secretary-General of the Commission.
The Commission is in a situation of effective captivity with Microsoft as regards its desktop operating system and office productivity tools like word processing and spread sheets, the Commission noted in an annex to its response.
The Commission has said open source isnt a viable alternative and will likely continue to use Microsoft products after its office software contracts expire this May.
The use and development of open source alternatives for desktop operating systems and productivity tools has been slow, the Commission noted in the document it sent to Andersdotter, adding that the adoption of such solutions remains marginal and tended to result from political decisions. Governments for example choose open source because they need to develop a local industry for the IT sector, rather than for its superior fitness-for-purpose, according to the Commission.
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EU institutions accused of doing nothing to free themselves from dependence on Microsoft