Canonical, the developer behind one of the most popular Linux operating system (OS) distributions - Ubuntu, has joined the Open Source Consortium (OSC) in criticising the BBC's iPlayer and its lack of support for other OS's.

Presently iPlayer, which has also taken flak from ISP's over its bandwidth eating Kontiki P2P video-on-demand (VoD) platform, only supports Microsoft's Windows XP OS with Vista soon to follow.

Meanwhile an e-petition calling on the BBC to open its iPlayer platform up to other operating systems has gained over 16,000 signatures, which is actually quite a lot given the performance of other petitions. The petition has now been submitted to the government for comment and consideration.

However it's worth pointing out that the BBC has been stating its intention to widen iPlayer's support for awhile and it should be noted that the technology is still in limited beta form. We're unlikely to see its true impact, if any, until after it’s finalised.