À cette occasion Neelie Kroes, la commissaire européenne chargée de la concurrence, a fait un intéressant discours sur le thème donc des standards.
On peut lire un résumé de l'intervention de Neelie Kroes sur le site le l'observatoire d'IDABC : « Competition Commissioner: EC must not accept closed standards ».
J'aime bien le passage :
Third, standardisation agreements should be based on the merits of the technologies involved. Allowing companies to sit around a table and agree technical developments for their industry is not something that the competition rules would usually allow. So when it is allowed we have to look carefully at how it is done.
If voting in the standard-setting context is influenced less by the technical merits of the technology but rather by side agreements, inducements, package deals, reciprocal agreements, or commercial pressure ... then these risk falling foul of the competition rules.
OOXML et Microsoft ne sont pas explicitement cités mais le message est clair. A ce sujet, au moins quatre pays font appel du vote de l'ISO sur la normalisation d'OOXML.
Le discours complet de Neelie Kroes : http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/08/317&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en.