Open Source consortium makes Canvas challenge

Open Source consortium makes Canvas challenge

By Julian Clover
Published: September 14, 2010 06.57 Europe/London

The Open Source Consortium (OSC), the UK trade body representing SME organizations that provide services and support based on open standards, has formally written to Ofcom asking it to investigate Project Canvas.
The OSC says that genuine open standards bring many benefits to all levels of society, particularly in lowering the barriers to entry as a result of increasing standardization and interoperability. However it says that it does not recognize Canvas as open in any sense of the term.

“OSC believes Project Canvas will have adverse consequences for the device and software sector, diminishing consumer choice and causing inevitable consumer harm. This will be the result of the BBC and its joint venture partners limiting technology choice, setting arbitrary access conditions and enforcing mandated branding decisions,” the organization said in a statement. “The technology choices by the BBC and its partners are discriminatory, creating an unfair and unjustified barrier to the consumer’s choice of software installed on a device used for “content consumption”.

Complaints against Canvas have already been filed by organizations that include BSkyB, Virgin Media and IP Vision.