BBC partnership with Microsoft
Saturday, October 7th, 2006Apologies for the lateness of this blog post – I was lucky enough to be sent to Spain for a few days this week. A lovely country that I had never visited before and the highlight of the trip was drinking a beer in Real Madrids stadium overlooking the (unfortunately) empty pitch.
Anyway. At the end of last month the BBC announced a partnership with Microsoft to deliver Internet content for the next generations of the BBC news site.
Is the fact that Microsoft are involved the main cause for concern here? Not really – I would object if any other software company tried to force the BBC down a path of using proprietary codecs and formats for it’s media.
Bill Gates announces the partnership with the claim that content will be available "anytime, anywhere and on any device". It sounds very good, but history reminds us that Microsoft aren’t the best organisation to be deploying cross platform solutions. We shouldn’t wait to see if Mr Gates promise is fulfilled or not.
With the help of the fsfe-uk mailing list we have drafted a letter in reaction to this news and I hope that we get a response. I’m considering sending it to alternate recipients to try and get some dialogue open with the BBC.