Mandatory Open Formats
electricitylikesme
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Registered User regular
This thread was inspired by the EU anti-trust thread, which has focussed somewhat on Microsoft's market dominance in the Office productivity application suite.
So hear I am wondering about what I see as the wider issue there - should data file formats be legally enforced as having to be fully documented in the public domain?
Digital information interchange is pretty much the name of the game these days - a good deal of working with anything on a computer is simply converting data from one format to another. A huge part of the XML format standard is simply that it's inherently "open" and so interpreting the structure of the file format is easy.
What does the rest of D&D think? Would there be advantage in enforcing full disclosure of file formats? Potential problems in maintaining market competition?
So hear I am wondering about what I see as the wider issue there - should data file formats be legally enforced as having to be fully documented in the public domain?
Digital information interchange is pretty much the name of the game these days - a good deal of working with anything on a computer is simply converting data from one format to another. A huge part of the XML format standard is simply that it's inherently "open" and so interpreting the structure of the file format is easy.
What does the rest of D&D think? Would there be advantage in enforcing full disclosure of file formats? Potential problems in maintaining market competition?
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Conversion between one software suite and a new one is the biggest IT headache ever, right up there with long term storage and licenses for software we never use anymore, just so we can open an 8 year old document that was written in it if anyone ever sues.
I can't see it mandatory, though.
As of yet, nobody's been able to use said documentation to produce a working read/write docx conversion.
If there were more open formats it would be so much easier, faster and cheaper for anyone ever making anything on a computer, it would surely lead to some benefits for, amongst others, Microsoft as well. In my opinion it's a win/win situation in the long run.
Emphasis: in the long run. Which is, I suppose, the reason why the big fish are reluctant.
Forcing it is pointless and expensive.
Will it now?
Yeah.
How do you propose this long-desired format revolution will occur?
In the old days you could get away with it, but nowadays there is too much competition. Entrenching your formats and making them incompatible is a big negative.
OOXML is a terrible standard and generally inferior in a number of significant ways to ODT/ODF. The only way it will ever gain any traction is if it manages to usurp the position of ODT at the ISO itself. The format itself was only ever created to prevent an end to the dominance of Microsoft in regards to format control - if ODT never existed (and wasn't supported by IBM, Sun, Novell, Apple) we'd all still be forced to use multiple incompatible versions of .doc.
There is too much competition in a market where a company has had a monopoly position for about 15 years now? Also, why is it not in the company's best interest to maintain a closed file format and sell a licence for additional platforms? Seriously. What are you even saying?
I think moving to towards a PDF model would work well, where anyone could read any file, you just couldn't make them without purchasing certain software. While I can see some benefits to open formats, I see none that justify compelling people to make it so.
Not legally enforced, no. If I write a game or something, I should be able to write the save files however I damn well please.
That said, I think it would be an excellent requirement for all software that the government is looking to buy. It's a public institution and closed data formats allow for easier lock-in.
The thing is, with a fully open format odds are you won't need to "purchase" anything as long as it's for personal use.
I'm with you as I don't want to see anybody getting compelled to use/publish a format. However, we have a de facto monopoly in the industry and the introduction of open formats would facilitate introducing users to alternative software. So, yeah, I'm with you, but my heart is crying.
Because monopolies don't last forever.
Sooner or later someone will come up with a product that is superior enough to Office products to be able to overthrow Microsoft's monopoly status.
Maybe a new algorithm, or even a completely new and revolutionary way of thinking about and doing word-processing. Suddenly .doc is a legacy format and Microsoft has no choice but to make the format open so that people can justify sticking with Word.
I mean sure, Microsoft is in a very powerful position right now, but their monopoly doesn't make them invulnerable to competition.
You're seriously the most optimistic economically person on that board. Let's put it that way. IF* that piece of software comes, corporate users would have two choices: Migrate or stay. If you have 10 zillion files that you won't be able to read the moment you move, no matter what the cost is, you'd stay. If the files were in an open format, competitors would be able to provide you with the opportunity to convert your current data. In the first case, no matter how brilliant the software is, it would die a slow death because of difficulties on adoption.
*and there is no reason to believe it will. Software changes have become incremental and the idea for a from scratch software being able to cause such steer is not serious.
Didn't you, just in the other thread, say there wasn't any good competition to Office?
I'm CONFUSED. Though I agree that forcing it's not a good idea, nor viable. I do want it to be made obvious who has what compatibility through a standards body. Like, you know, people actually funding the ISO properly.
edit: Just to point out why people want open formats.
Suppose I work in an industry that's legally required to keep all documents for seven years. So a new product comes out to make Better documents. With a closed file format, I have to either stay on my old software Forever in order to stay legally compliant, or run Both (which in our current yearly license heavy corporate purchasing environment, means I have to keep paying for something I no longer use daily), since conversion is not an option.
This makes it very hard to switch software even if the new stuff is Nicer. Think of it as if you bought a new video card. Now in order to play any game you purchased prior to that new video card, you had to use the old card. That's kind of a bitch, ain't it?
Since when are file formats considered private property? Or for that matter, since when were they property?
Edit: And what of our files? Should we not be able to do as we wish with them, and fight against those who would attempt to control that property by designing incompatibilities in to the formats in which the property is stored?
TCP/IP is not Open Source.
It is a Standard.
Creating a Standard does not require you to disclose your code to do so, it requires you to document what all the stored bits do. There's a monumental difference.
There isn't any good competition to Office right now.
This doesn't mean there won't be any good competition to Office five years down the line. Or even next month.
Obviously the benefits of the new software would have to outweigh the cost of migration. This means the product has to be pretty remarkable, or maybe revolutionary.
Oh, they're already open-source? Then this thread seems weird.
Please stop misusing that word.
Open Source: You give me your entire uncompiled Office code.
Open Format: You tell me what line 3, character 17 in .docx means for tabbing.
The hell? Where did you get that from?
"Open source" code isn't the same as "open format" files. The purpose of closed source code is (usually) to protect intellectual property and copyrights. The purpose of closed format files is (usually) to promote lock-in to a specific product.
I'm against the government being locked in to specific products, so I advocate only open file formats for government use. Private companies and individuals can do whatever they want.
In this context, it means any format that is not open. That includes formats that are ostensibly documented, but whose documentation is so awful that the point is defeated.
One in which only the creator (of the format) knows in what order or what meaning the bits have.
In document storage, it's figuring out which pieces are text, which are display formatting, etc.
Proprietary Formats are only readable/writable by the vendor and anyone they give the documentation to. Open Formats have published documentation that allows anyone to make software that will read/write those files.
A file format with an undocumented specification, so that only the people who wrote the software that creates them are capable of deciphering their content.
.doc is a proprietary file format. There is no publically available specification that would enable someone to write a piece of software capable of opening, editing, and saving .doc files, other than the information gained by tedious reverse engineering by the teams behind OO.org et al.
This is a problem because it means that if you run a business, and all your archived files from,say,the last five years are .doc files, you are now "locked in" to that format because there's no realistic way a large organisation can migrate to using software other than MS Office. Thus, you have to keep buying it year after year whether you want to or not.
Yeah, this is why I shy from advocating a law that mandates open file formats for everyone.
I just think it would be really sane to require the use of open file formats in order to sell the software to public institutions.
Actually, it's perfect legal to reverse engineer something that is the subject matter of a trade secret anyway, as long as misappropriation is not involved. Example: I buy a product, reverse engineer it, and discover that it contains a certain chemical that no other products of this type contain. As long as putting that into it wasn't patented, I've just destroyed the trade secret in a perfectly legal way.
Further, does it provide any advantage for the file format owner to know the specifications? If that would help him do something (if not everything) better than a competitor, it can still be a trade secret.
You might be able to mandate "compatibility" or some such thing, but mandating a surrender of property is not going to go over well.