Opera Complaint Against Microsoft Backed by FSFE

Jan 23, 2009

Opera Software has filed a complaint against Microsoft's practice of tying Internet Explorer to Windows. The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has offered its backing of Opera's complaint.

The European Commission Directorate General for Competition followed up just a few days ago on Opera's concern by issuing yet another statement of objections to Microsoft's practice. The FSFE welcomes the initiative and offers the commission assistance in their investigation.

"Web browsers are becoming a critical platform for home and business computing," according to Shane Coughlan, legal coordinator at the FSFE. "The market previously failed to prevent unfair distortion of the desktop environment and we cannot allow such practices to be repeated."

A letter from FSFS president Georg Greve to European competition commissioner Neelie Kroes clearly states, "Although Opera Software does not produce Free Software,... we largely share their assessment and concerns regarding the present situation in the Internet browser market." He goes on to say, "Precisely because [products such as Firefox and Konquerer] abide by industry recognized Open Standards and cannot implement the Microsoft undisclosed and non-compliant 'dialects' of these standards, they often appear 'impaired' when compared with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which establishes itself as the closed, de facto standard due to [its] dominant position."

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