But hold on - you're confusing two issues here. Erik Huggers no
longer work for Microsoft - he works for the BBC.
So either we say that working for Microsoft at some point in his past
has made him fundamentally untrustworthy for all time, and therefore
unqualified to make these kind of decisions for another organisation
in the future; OR we take the view that he will work on behalf of the
organisation that he's being paid by, in the absence of evidence to
the contrary. Promoting closed formats in the face of all the
arguments was doing the "right thing" as far as Microsoft was
concerned - so if he's got a track record of doing the right thing by
his employer, it's reasonable to assume that he's going to try to do
the right thing for the BBC - whatever that happens to be.
I don't buy the line that having worked for Microsoft in the past is
some kind of incurable virus that renders you forever immune to the
open standards arguments. Assuming he has no conflicts of interests,
then surely he's entitled to the benefit of the doubt - and I've read
nothing to suggest that he has conflicted interests in the way that,
say, certain individuals at the National Archives have.
Ad hominem attacks on Erik Huggers are a distraction from the
underlying issues of technology and interoperability - and I'm sure
the pro-Microsoft camp are only too happy for the community to waste
bandwidth on one particular individual.
On 15 Apr 2008, at 10:00, Sean DALY wrote:
Tim, what disturbs people about a former MS executive in that position
is that Microsoft's interests are not at all aligned with the
interests of a public broadcaster. Microsoft wants video format
lockin, which is why to this day Windows Media Player has no support
for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 and AAC (Xbox excluded), the Xiph Ogg codecs, or
even Dirac for that matter whose bitstream has been frozen for SMPTE
VC-2. Microsoft chooses not to license Windows Media 9 format for
implementation in GNU/Linux. Their DRM architecture is Microsoft-only,
just like the Apple FairPlay AVC/AAC extension is Apple-only.
If Mr. Huggers had worked for, say, a bank, nobody would care. But he
had an active role at Microsoft promoting a closed, proprietary format
at the expense of open formats. Anyone using a non-Microsoft system
knows that only open standards guarantee interoperability and given
Microsoft's shoddy record on open standards, concerns are justified.
Probably the best thing he could do to allay those concerns would be
to support open standards. It's a mystery to me why the BBC doesn't
make available a Dirac codec installer for WMP. I have no doubt the
browsers and mobile manufacturers would line up for Dirac given its
patent-unencumbered status. Did you see Sun announcing the reinvention
of the wheel last week, a patent-unencumbered video codec?
Sean.
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