European Committee for Interoperable Systems

Last updated

The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) is an international non-profit association founded in 1989 in order to promote interoperability and market conditions in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector allowing vigorous competition on the merits and a diversity of consumer choice. ECIS has represented its members on many issues related to interoperability and competition before European, national and international bodies, including the European Union institutions and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). [ citation needed ] ECIS members include large and smaller information and communications technology hardware and software providers as Adobe Systems, Corel Corporation, IBM, Linspire, Nokia, Opera Software, Oracle Corporation, RealNetworks, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems. [1]

Contents

Involvement against Microsoft dominance

Over the past years, ECIS has been actively involved in the European Commission's antitrust condemnation against Microsoft, now upheld by the European Court of First Instance in September 2007. [2] [3] [4]

Ziff-Davis' eWeek comments that

- [1]

Other complaints about Microsoft include:

See also

Statements about the European Commission's antitrust case against Microsoft

Related Research Articles

Adobe FrameMaker document processor for the production and manipulation of large structured documents

Adobe FrameMaker is a document processor designed for writing and editing large or complex documents, including structured documents. It was originally developed by Frame Technology Corporation, which was bought by Adobe.

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) is a global nonprofit consortium that works on the development, convergence, and adoption of open standards for security, Internet of Things, energy, content technologies, emergency management, and other areas.

Extensible Application Markup Language is a declarative XML-based language developed by Microsoft that is used for initializing structured values and objects. It is available under Microsoft's Open Specification Promise. The acronym originally stood for Extensible Avalon Markup Language, Avalon being the code-name for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is a ZIP-compressed XML-based file format for spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. It was developed with the aim of providing an open, XML-based file format specification for office applications.

Online help is topic-oriented, procedural or reference information delivered through computer software. It is a form of user assistance. Most online help is designed to give assistance in the use of a software application or operating system, but can also be used to present information on a broad range of subjects. When online help is linked to the state of the application, it is called Context-sensitive help.

A user interface markup language is a markup language that renders and describes graphical user interfaces and controls. Many of these markup languages are dialects of XML and are dependent upon a pre-existing scripting language engine, usually a JavaScript engine, for rendering of controls and extra scriptability.

A number of vector graphics editors exist for various platforms. Potential users of these editors will make a comparison of vector graphics editors based on factors such as the availability for the user's platform, the software license, the feature set, the merits of the user interface (UI) and the focus of the program. Some programs are more suitable for artistic work while others are better for technical drawings. Another important factor is the application's support of various vector and bitmap image formats for import and export.

Open XML Paper Specification is an open specification for a page description language and a fixed-document format. Microsoft developed it as the XML Paper Specification (XPS). In June 2009, Ecma International adopted it as international standard ECMA-388.

This is an overview of software support for the OpenDocument format, an open document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents.

Office Open XML is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. The format was initially standardized by Ecma, and by the ISO and IEC in later versions.

Windows CardSpace

Windows CardSpace, is Microsoft's now-canceled client software for the Identity Metasystem. CardSpace is an instance of a class of identity client software called an Identity Selector. CardSpace stores references to users' digital identities for them, presenting them to users as visual Information Cards. CardSpace provides a consistent UI designed to help people to easily and securely use these identities in applications and web sites where they are accepted. Resistance to phishing attacks and adherence to Kim Cameron's "7 Laws of Identity" were goals in its design.

A proprietary format is a file format of a company, organization, or individual that contains data that is ordered and stored according to a particular encoding-scheme, designed by the company or organization to be secret, such that the decoding and interpretation of this stored data is easily accomplished only with particular software or hardware that the company itself has developed. The specification of the data encoding format is not released, or underlies non-disclosure agreements. A proprietary format can also be a file format whose encoding is in fact published, but is restricted through licences such that only the company itself or licencees may use it. In contrast, an open format is a file format that is published and free to be used by everybody.

Quick View software

Quick View is a file viewer in Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 operating systems. The viewer can be used to view practically any file.

Microsoft Silverlight Application framework for writing and running rich Internet applications

Microsoft Silverlight is a deprecated application framework for writing and running rich Internet applications, similar to Adobe Flash. A plugin for Silverlight is still available for some browsers. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, later versions supported multimedia, graphics, and animation and gave support to developers for CLI languages and development tools. Silverlight was also one of the two application development platforms for Windows Phone, but web pages using Silverlight did not run on the Windows Phone or Windows Mobile versions of Internet Explorer, as there was no Silverlight plugin for Internet Explorer on those platforms.

Opposition to software patents is widespread in the free software community. In response, various mechanisms have been tried to defuse the perceived problem.

David Webber Information Semantics

David R.R. Webber is an Information technologist specializing in applications of XML, ebXML and EDI to standards-based information exchanges. He is a senior member of the ACM since 2007. David Webber is one of the originators of the ebXML initiative for global electronic business via the internet. He is holder of two U.S. Patents for electronic information exchange transformation and those patents are now cited widely by 37 other patents. David Webber has implemented several unique groundbreaking computer solutions in his career including the world's first airport gate scheduling system , the SeeMail email client for MCIMail written in Prolog, the patented GoXML system for XMLGlobal, the ShroudIt obfuscation system for LNK Corp, and the VisualScript tool for Smartdraw Inc.

The Microsoft Open Specification Promise is a promise by Microsoft, published in September 2006, to not assert its patents, in certain conditions, against implementations of a certain list of specifications.

Linspire Linux distribution

Linspire is a commercial operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux and Ubuntu and currently owned by PC/OpenSystems LLC. From 2001 to 2008, it was owned by Linspire. Inc., and from 2008 to 2017 by Xandros.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Microsoft Competitors' 'Wow' Moment". microsoft-watch.com. 2007-01-26. Archived from the original on 2012-09-22. Retrieved 2008-02-24. Today, ECIS (European Committee for Interoperable Systems) again charged that Windows Vista would stifle innovation and competition. The group, founded in 1989, represents a Who's Who list of Microsoft competitors, including Adobe, Corel, IBM, Linspire, Nokia, Opera, Oracle, RealNetworks, Red Hat and Sun. Many of these same companies are Microsoft partners, too.
  2. 1 2 "ECIS Media Release January 26, 2007". ECIS. 2007-01-26. Retrieved 2008-03-06. With XAML and OOXML Microsoft seeks to impose its own Windows-dependent standards and displace existing open cross-platform standards which have wide industry acceptance, permit open competition and promote competition-driven innovation. 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
  3. ECIS News room
  4. "Microsoft hit by two more EC probes". The Register. 2008-01-14. Retrieved 2008-02-24. Commission will also investigate whether the software giant's new office file format, Office Open XML, is interoperable enough with competing products. This refers to a complaint made by the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS)
  5. "Microsoft runs into EU Vista charges". itwire.com. 2007-01-28. Archived from the original on 2008-09-13. Retrieved 2008-02-24. The main complaint is Microsoft's bundling of its own markup language XAML with Vista. According to ECIS, XAML has been positioned to compete with the universally used HTML (hypertext markup language), which is the code used to design web pages of sites in use today. ECIS contends that bundling XAML with Vista is an attempt to promote the creation of websites that work only with Vista.
  6. Fulton, Scott (2007-01-28). "ECIS Accuses Microsoft of Plotting HTML Hijack". betanews.com. Retrieved 2008-02-24.