Groklaw’s Sean Daly has been busy getting more information for us about the recent announcement by Opera that it has filed a complaint with the European Commission against Microsoft. He’s done two interviews. This one is with Thomas Vinje, the lawyer for the European Committee for Interoperable Systems [ECIS], who is helping to represent Opera before the Commission. You can listen if you wish to the audio [Ogg], and we have a transcript also. You can get the Audacity player to play Ogg audio files here and yes, it works on Windows and Macs too, and it’s licensed under the GPL.
You’ll likely recall Sean’s interview with him immediately after the European Court of First Instance in September announced it had upheld the EU Commission’s finding [PDF] that Microsoft had abused its dominant position.
The second interview Sean has just done for us was a group interview with Opera’s CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner, Jason A. Hoida,
Deputy General Counsel, and CTO, Håkon Wium Lie. We hope to have that for you very soon.
I definitely understand much more about the complaint and why Opera decided to ask for relief, and I think you will too. By the way, notice that it is a complaint filed with the EU Commission, which will in turn decide whether or not to investigate and act; Opera has not sued Microsoft in any court. This isn’t like litigation between two companies. That is only one of many misunderstandings that hopefully these interviews will clear up for everyone.
Mr. Vinje explains, among many other things, how this complaint could benefit everyone, not just Opera, if it is successful. Perhaps it has already had some success, eh? I read that Microsoft just announced yesterday that an internal test build of Internet Explorer 8 passed the Acid2 test, one test for standards compliance. It’s completely unrelated to Opera’s complaint, they say, and that may indeed be true. But as you’ll see in the interview, compliance with the Acid2 test is one thing the Opera complaint specifically asked for. It’s still the case that Microsoft didn’t always have standards compliance evan as a vital goal. And, without wishing to be unkind, some of us would like to verify with our own eyes.…more
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