@Antidisestablishmentarianist @Nick L
@Antidisestablishmentarianist
In a market economy the BBC has got to work with other people.
There are many reasons intrinsic to the BBC why they would be better off running FLOSS. But even if the BBC were running iPlayer on FLOSS, the technical people have to earn a living. The BBC would have to be in bed with someone.
@Nick L
Well, now, a non-technical person can choose a computer by price (and by sheer chance gain extra benefits, e.g., freedom from viruses) and watch or download programmes from BBC iPlayer, probably oblivious to the fact they are running GNU/Linux, but the good news is, that even if GNU/Linux brings you out in hives, the increasing use of it with drive down the price of other software and so benefit users of that software. This will be caused by organisations such as the BBC enabling "it just works" platform neutrality (as they should have done from the start, but at least it's happening now)
More generally, on the same topic a broadsheet website contained this gem "...though 85% of iPlayer users are on Windows-based machines, there has been pressure on the BBC to open up the full service to users of all operating systems..."
1) as if there's a threshold below which it's OK to discriminate
2) failing to acknowledge that were it not for that 15% (and growing) then the 85% (and falling) would be paying even more for their software than they are now