The European Union should be at the forefront of supporting open standards. There are no excuses for artificial impediments to communication or data sharing.
There is no legal barrier to support an open and free streaming standard specification. The issue is not Linux nor anything else. Content for the public should not be controlled nor owned - even indirectly - by a private entity. So if EC seeks credibilit it should open up content in a free way, with "free" meaning "freedom" of a "free" world.
What good is a democratic process if it's not accessible to all?
For the EU to use a non-free technology, even worse one which cannot be accessed on free (as in speech) systems, is absurdly hypocritical.
The use of a system controlled by Microsoft makes your efforts to have Microsoft open up their products to competition look purely like posturing. You cannot condemn a company for preventing interoperability and then use that same company's product which suffers from those same limitations. Well, of course it seems you can, but you can't do it and still be taken as genuinely concerned about Microsoft's practices.
You need to change this system to show not only Microsoft, but also your constituents, that you are serious about fair trade practices.
So EU does also think that linux is communist-chinese world domination machinae. Comoon, linux originates from the EU area itself, while microsoft doesnt.
Illegal to support Open formats or protocols? In what galaxy, under what kind of ridiculous law? Get a new lawyer, not one who's mind is polluted by legislative inaction and MS and Sony's misinformation.
Why should anyone that chooses to real software not access your content?
Which Devil's bidding would you not do?
In a free democratic society, the government should provide all information in a manner that is accessible by all the people, which in this case means no use of proprietary software formats that are not accessible by people who cannot afford the high expense of the monopolistic Microsoft Windows software.
I would appreciate if the "Streaming Service of the Council of the European Union" would re-consider their decision and would start to service EU members using free and open source software as well. I am confident there are a varity of options that this can be done in a legal way.
The claim of legal problems is ridiculous. There are plenty of effective, open, free and platform- and software-independent streaming formats available. OGM/Vorbis/Theora is one blatant example. I'm ashamed to help finance this organization through my taxes.
