Britain complains to EU about Microsoft file system

By AOIFE WHITE, AP Business Writer, Technology / Software

(AP) -- A British watchdog agency said Tuesday it had complained to European Union regulators that Microsoft Corp.'s new file format for storing documents discouraged competition.

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Posted by Nemo 05/13/08 18:57

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The Linux environment is completely sufficient to teach students the core elements of IT. By the time they graduate Linux may well be the defacto business standard anyway.

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Posted by visual 05/14/08 02:39

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The title reveals how clueless the reporter is - a file format is a very different thing than a file system.
As to the story itself, MS's new format is open, compressed human-readable XML text, and while it lacks some official documentation it's still heaps better than the old binary formats. So I don't see what the big deal is.

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Posted by CreepyD 05/14/08 08:18

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I think the point is that you can't instantly open xlsx, docx etc files in software other than Office 2007.
You need to upgrade / install a patch for the time being.