OStatic

It wasn't that long ago that the BBC drew the ire of the open source community by inferring Linux users made up only a fraction of visitors to its Web site, and it's been trying to make it up the FOSS community ever since.

This week, the BBC announced plans to create a four-part documentary, tentatively called Digital Revolution, about the impact and importance of the Web on everyday lives. Though the project is getting attention in the media as an open source documentary, it doesn't really focus on free and open source software, it simply takes a collaborative approach to the thoughts and ideas covered in the series. But that shouldn't stop the open source community from making sure they're heard.

The BBC's iPlayer site has been a target of open source community ire since it started. Originally delivering content via Microsoft DRM-protected technologies, it was condemned by the FSF (among others) for dictating unfree technology choices on viewers. The technology behind the iPlayer has changed somewhat since then, but by and large it's been a proprietary stack that doesn't play well with free software.