IBM, Nokia, Sun and others call Microsoft Vista ‘Illegal’

In 2004, the European Commission found that Microsoft pushed out RealNetworks and other makers of audio and video streaming software and made Windows deliberately incompatible with rivals’ server software.

Now, IBM, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, Corel, Oracle, RealNetworks, Red Hat, Linspire and Opera are filing a complaint with the European Commission regarding Vista.

The group said Microsoft’s XAML markup language was “positioned to replace HTML”. They also say Microsoft’s own language would be dependent on Windows, and discriminatory against rival systems such as Linux, the group says. They said a so-called “open XML” platform file format, known as OOXML, is designed to run seamlessly only on the Microsoft Office platform. Vista is set to launch on Tuesday.