Microsoft rivals call for EU Vista ban

A GROUP OF Microsoft's worst enemies have banded together to call for the EU to put the brakes on the release of Vista.

The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS)group, which includes IBM, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, Oracle and Red Hat, complained last year that Microsoft would use Vista to kill off competition.

Now just days before Vista hits the shops the group said that its complaints made last year are yet to be addressed and the EU should stop Vista being released.

The group thinks that Microsoft wants to replace HTML for publishing internet documents with its own XAML markup language. XAML would be dependent on Windows, and discriminatory against systems such as Linux, the group said.

"Vista is the first step of Microsoft's strategy to extend its market dominance to the Internet," the ECIS statement said.

A Commission spokesman said it was still studying the ECIS complaint which it got a look at on Friday and it had not made up its mind what to do about Vista.

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