UK tech agency files complaint against Microsoft

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) has filed a complaint with the European Commission against Microsoft. The root of the issue has to do with the lack of native support in Office 2007 for interoperability with the rival OpenDocument Format (ODF)--a standard developed by the Open Office XML technical committee and originally implemented by the OpenOffice.org office suite. It also is a format largely supported by governments and educators.

Instead, Microsoft has released a converter that lets Word users open and save documents in the OpenDocument format, which Becta says is not good enough. A company statement from Microsoft failed to answer the complaint, simply noting that, "We have funded the development of tools to promote interoperability between Office 2007 and products based on the ODF file format. We will continue to work with Becta and the Commission in a cooperative manner to resolve these issues."

For more on the complaint against Microsoft:
- check out CNET's News.com article