When the European Commission launched a streaming video service last year which excluded Linux users, large swathes of the open source community became deeply angry. Now, a Surrey local council has shown that open source operating systems can be included in such programmes.

The Commission's service, which streams key decision-making meetings over the internet from the Brussels council chamber, can only be viewed by individuals using Microsoft Windows or an Apple's Mac OS X. More than 18,000 unhappy Linux users signed a petition demanding that the Commission allow them to view the streams. The Commission was unmoved by these calls, and claimed that supporting Linux was illegal.

In the meantime, a local council in Surrey been developing an identical streaming project over the last 18 months. And unlike the Commission's project, developers behind the UK version have made their service available to Linux users.

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