The ongoing battle between RealNetworks Inc and Microsoft Corp took a new twist Friday when a group of 20 companies, led by RealNetworks, got together to announce support for a new set of standards governing file formats. The initiative, which comes just one week after RealNetworks said Microsoft’s Windows Media Player of breaks its G2 audio and video software (CI No 3,460), is the company’s way of upgrading the controversy to an industry- wide concern. Not surprisingly, Netscape, Sun and Novell are among the industry heavyweights who’ve put their names behind the Ask, Tell & Help: Fair Practices and Conventions for handling file formats in the Era of the Internet initiative, aimed at promoting compatibility between different vendors’ file formats. The goal of these principles is to help users get the best possible experience from using their personal computers to access files over the internet, RealNetworks said in a statement. The principles cover three specific areas: asking users’ permission before becoming the preferred software that reads or writes a particular type of file; telling users if there are any limitations to how the files are read or written; and helping users by providing them with information on how they can find other software that reads that type of file without limitation. The group also pledged to work together to implement a vendor- neutral, industry-wide program to ensure that these principles are put into practice, the statement said. Other participating companies include NetManage, 7th Level, Digital Bitcasting, LiveUpdate, Spinner.com, MpegTV and QSound Labs. In true form, Microsoft officials are dismissing the initiative as a public relations stunt. One paper quoted a spokesperson as saying: RealNetworks is shifting the focus of the debate away from [Rob Glaser’s, CEO RealNetworks] inaccurate testimony to these rules of the road for how applications should interact with each other. This is clearly an attempt to gloss over the little thing that happened last Thursday.
