One of Becta's complaints in their referral of Microsoft to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) appears to have been directly addressed, with an announced support for the Open Document Format (ODF) to become available in Service Pack 2 of Office 2007. This is good news!
According to industry sources the support will be available from early 2009, and the work is being carried out by Microsoft in-house. Support for older versions is not included, but this has largely been addressed through other means. This does open the potential for the use of the free and open source products such as Open Office to be used to address issues around cheap software for Home Access. I'm not ready to abandon Microsoft Office, which I believe is excellent value for money, especially as I use it most of my working hours, (and too many of my leisure hours), but this was a key requirement for Microsoft to comply with as part of the referral to OFT.
The news that Becta have decided to add their OFT complaint to an ongoing EU action against Microsoft means that the time to a resolution is likely to be extended. This does indicate that the promised revision of the Microsoft Vista and Office Report is now on a longer time scale, and we could do with knowing whether their advice stands until the EU reports back ... could be some time, and my guess is that schiools will move on. My guess is that we can expect a hard line from the EU when it eventually reports, as it seems to have an issue with Microsoft that isn't proprtionate to the original complaint. The fact that even the judge in the EU case was apparently shocked at the size of the fine indicates that there is a degree of Microsoft bashing within the EU.
As I posted previously, I still cannot see why Apple is allowed to dominate the media market with a closed ecosystem without challenge, yet Microsoft is forced to hand over its intellectual property and face punitive fines. I don't feel forced to use MS products, there's lots of alternatives (and I've tried lots of them) but I do choose to! I also choose to use iPods and iTunes (and am getting Apple TV as well). I even use Ubuntu and Open Office. Its a wondefully rich software world out there, and Microsoft by no means have a monopoly anymore. They do have a business to run, and they are pretty good at it!
I do support Becta in their complaint against some of educational licensing practices that Microsoft apply; its just plain wrong and they do need to sort this out. They can't insist on licenses for software that isn't being used.
Becta's references can be found HERE.