“It would be better that the government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism – that we live in fear and under a police state[...]“

Dame Stella Rimington, former Director General of MI5

Found in a BBC News report Ministers ‘using fear of terror’

“Critically though, I think the BBC can, and should, do more to support the Free and Open Source community”

Ashley Highfield, Director, BBC Future Media & Technology

Most major web based developments of any scale these days work on the presumption that interoperablity, open standards, and platform neutrality are givens. It is not clear why the BBC design brief did not specify these requirements or if it did what technical problems – given the expertise available – hinder them being implemented.

So long as the iPlayer is bundled in with Windows/Internet Explorer it continues to run the risk of breaching state aid rules – as the benefits it thereby bestows on Microsoft (with their somewhat blemished reputation for fair competition) come via the deployment of the public’s licence money.

John Pugh MP, in a letter to Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC