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A group of Microsoft’s rivals has filed a complaint against the Seattle-based company for using its new product Vista, under release these days, to unfairly continue and even strengthen its dominant position on the market.

The group including IBM, Nokia, RealNetworks, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, Corel, Opera, Oracle, Red Hat and Linspire complained to the European Commission saying that the computer language used in the Vista software, called XAML, was "positioned to replace HTML," the standard language used to publish documents on the Internet. XAML would be dependent on Microsoft Windows thus discriminating against other systems like Linux. The group also stated that OOXML, a platform file format that governs the way in which files are stored and formatted, was designed to run only in the Microsoft Office software.

Simon Awde, chairman of the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) stated that: "Microsoft has clearly chosen to ignore the fundamental principles of the Commission's March 2004 decision”. The respective decision was saying that Microsoft had used its market dominant position to force out RealNetworks and other makers of audio and video streaming software, and that Microsoft desktop Windows system had on purpose been designed to be incompatible with other software.

ECIS also stated that "Vista is the first step of Microsoft's strategy to extend its market dominance to the Internet” and "The end result will be the continued absence of any real consumer choice, years of waiting for Microsoft to improve - or even debug - its monopoly products and of course high prices".

On the other hand, Linux considers that Vista could be a good opportunity for promoting its own operating system, as the new characteristics and the slightly different feel and look of the software may create disruptions in the working place when moving from an older Microsoft version to Vista.

While Microsoft, which has challenged the 2004 decision and waits for a decision by the EU's Court of First Instance, has made no comment on the new accusations, a spokesman for the European Commission stated that the complaint made by the competitors’ group was being examined.

Rivals attack Vista as illegal under EU rules (26.01.2007)
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-6153671.html

Rivals accuse Microsoft before Vista's introduction (26.01.2007)
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/26/business/vista.php

Rivals accuse Microsoft of bullying tactics (29.01.2007)
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39285666,00.htm

EDRI-gram - Microsoft Vista gets criticism before its launching in Europe (27.09.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.18/vista