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When Should File Formats Be Placed in the Public Domain?
wccwcc writes "A lot has been said about file formats and standards creating network effects and huge profits. That said, is there a time when file formats should enter the public domain, or is it ok for companies to sit on them forever. These are some ideas on when and how file formats should enter the public domain, just like trademarks do when they become "generic"."
Does Software Need a Special Form of Intellectual Property Protection?
Introduction
It is no secret that exclusivity is critical for extreme profitability, we call this monopoly. The founding fathers understood the tension between granting monopoly to encourage innovation but placing limits on monopoly to prevent deterrences to future innovation. These grants are often formally constructed in the form of patents and copyright, or in the form of legislation with respect to anti-trust enforcement.
The existing laws concerning grants of monopoly are becoming inappropriate or inappropriately enforced when it comes to intellectual property, especially in this digital age of perfect copies. What kind of exclusivity should be granted now and how does one maintain exclusivity as it pertains to the goal of fostering innovation.
There are many cases today where certain forms of intellectual property confer incredible network effects. A cursory analysis reveals that exclusive possession of a dominant standard of interchange confers definite market advantage and market monopoly. Whereas markets with publicly available specifications are very competitive. A standard is a form of intellectual property, and the claim is that the efforts and expenditures needed to produce that format are costly, and without some form of exclusivity innovation would be deterred. This is a plausible claim, but the question to ask is what are the limits of that exclusivity, and are there occasions where that exclusivity can be revoked. The rest of this essay explores the different types of IP protection as it applies to software, the duality between expression and utility that software possesses and suggests that software file formats may be placed into the public domain in the same way that trademarks are.
A Survey of Intellectual Property Protection
United States Intellectual Property law as specified in the constitution has always acknowledged a grant of exclusivity in order to foster innovation. However, that grant of exclusivity has always involved some trade off to encourage further innovation. With patents, the trade off has been that the patent owner possesses exclusive license to their invention in trade for fully disclosing enough information such that a skilled practitioner would be able to replicate the utility covered by the patent. Patents also place limits on the length of time the patent owner receives exclusive license. Lastly, patents primarily cover utility or functionality. There are special types of patents known as design patents that cover the appearance of an invention, not the function. Design patents provide a shorter length of time of exclusivity.
The other major form of intellectual property right is copyright, which protects expression. U.S. Law grants the owner of a copyright, exclusive rights to determine means and frequency of duplication for a period of 80 years after the death of the creator. This grant of exclusivity is received in exchange for allowing recipients of copyrighted material fair use rights. Fair use rights include rights to study, quote for review, criticism, scholarship and research. Copyright clearly does not cover utility, even though the material expressed may have utility, an example being a cookbook.
There is another form of protection known as Trade Secret protection, which basically states, if you take reasonable steps to protect the knowledge in question, you retain unlimited exclusivity through secrecy. As long as reasonable steps are taken to protect secrecy, the exclusivity is protected. If for reasons of negligence the trade secret is revealed all rights are lost.
As we see, all forms of exclusivity granted are not unlimited and all come with conditions. Additionally, the protection afforded is mutually exclusive, you cannot possess both patent protection, copyright protection and trade secret status at the same time for the same piece of intellectual property. However a piece of work may contain multiple forms of protection. So what is the correct form of intellectual protection for software?
How Should Software Be Protected?
Software has traditionally been protected by a combination of copyright and licensing. Copyright pertains to how the material can be disseminated, and licensing agreements are a way of asking the user to revoke the rights of fair use. As the author is not a legal scholar, it is not clear whether that revokation is binding since one cannot cede certain rights away. The ramification then is if copyright applies to software, does the user have the right to study and reverse engineer the application for scholarly or criticism purposes. Under license no, but under copyright protection, the user should have the right. This question is left open for further discussion.
However there are other issues with treating software as copyrightable material and that is how software possesses properties of both being expression and utility. The distinction between source code and object code has been covered extensively because of the open source movement, and both have been treated as roughly equivalent. A more detailed look reveals that source code is clearly expression, it is understandable by people but not by computers. Object code is the reverse, understandable by computers but not by people. In addition, object code when executing has utility in many cases and is not expression. Given that object code clearly may possess utility and in any normal sense of the word does not possess expression relative to people. Does object code appropriately copyrightable?
Next consider the product of object code, or running applications such as a word processor or spreadsheet. It is generally accepted that a document created on a word processor can be copyrighted. This is very clear when the document is published in a human readable physical format such as paper. But what is the copyright owner status of the actual word processing file. One part of the data file is the expression of the author, the surrounding information describing how the document should be printed, who the author is, etc. is the expression of the application and arguably the expression of the programmer. But is that information about information what is commonly called metadata, expression, and if so, is it copyrighted expression? Probably not, but then what is the IP status of the file?
The argument can be made that the file format possesses utility, describing the representation of how user defined data should be presented. If a file format has utility then it is an invention, and the proper protection would be patent, requiring sufficient disclosure that a skilled practioner could replicate it. If the file format is copyrighted, who owns the copyright of documents distributed in the word processing format? As you can see, there is not an obvious resolution.
RIght now, most file formats most likely fall under the category of trade secret, this is especially the case with current office productivity applications and desktop publishing software. Limited disclosure by the creator perhaps, but in most cases not sufficient for a skilled practitioner to replicate. Adobe's PDF is a notable exception in that full specification is published and available royalty free. It is hard to argue that the vendors of these applications have taken efforts to hide the secret description since documents using the specification have been distributed widely. It is not like the formula for Coke that is locked in a safe somewhere. What active steps software publishers have taken is by encoding the metadata in object code and even sometimes encoding the author's expression as well. This object encoding makes reverse engineering very difficult. Trade secret status is also more compatible with licensing agreements.
So if competitive software markets for applications requiring data exchange is dependent on a fully published specification being available, but the presence of such a specification implies loss of exclusivity and hence a loss of incentive to innovate, what is one to do? Lack of innovation means that consumers will suffer, but lack of competition means that consumers have fewer choices and may in some cases pay higher rates. Is there a way out?
Perhaps there is, consider another area of intellectual property law that may provide some guidance. Have there been cases, where an owner's right to exclusivity has been revoked and placed in the public domain? The answer is yes and that is in the area of trademark law. What is discussed next is analogous and is meant to open discussion not saying that software is equivalent to a brand name.
Brand names are a form intellectual property that are developed and confer some market advantage such as an association with certain attributes or functionality. Any business school student will tell you that brand creation is a costly and difficult endeavor, similar to the creation of most IP, in fact it is a form of IP. But trademarks have an interesting property in that if a brand name comes into common usage, the trademark can fall into the public domain. This has happened in the U.S. with "asprin," the brand name for acetylsalycilic acid developed by Bayer. In Canada, you go to the drug store and request the popular analgesic by the generic name unless specifically requesting the Bayer Asprin brand. In the U.S., asprin is a generic term.
If a computing standard falls into similarly wide usage, then maybe a similar entry into the public domain might occur in the name of the public interest. It preserves the initial right of exclusivity and to benefit from that exclusivity without creating a situation where benefit can occur indefinitely.
There are certain civil liberty issues associated with unilateral revocation that some may find unsatisfying. So another alternative is offered. Accepting the premise that standards are a special form of utility and not expression, create a special class of patents for interchange standards of all types of software. Standard patents would have shorter life spans, would require full escrowed disclosure at time of filing -- meaning the specification would be disclosed to the patent office, but not to others. During the duration of this patent, the owner would receive the full benefits of exclusivity for the life of the patent, except in the special case when the standard becomes so ubiquitous that it in effect has attained common use similar to what is experienced by trademarks. A measure of generic status could be some level market and usage ubiquity similar to what is used in determining when a trademark becomes deemed generic. It would only apply to applications that are involved in interoperability.
When generic use is declared, the specification comes out of escrow and is made publicly available. At that point, if the duration of the patent has not expired, competitors could license at reasonable cost usage of the specification, akin to the requirements of compulsory licensing that current patent law requires. When the patent expires, the specification falls into generic status similar to medications and is in the public domain. Changes in kind to the specification are registered under escrow but do not extend the lifetime of the standard patent. Changes in type would permit extension. The requirement that the specification be sufficient for any skilled practitioner to replicate would mean that depending on the complexity of the standard, it would range from a description to actual source code.
The creation of a special patent type is not novel, as the existence of design patents vs. utility patents demonstrates. It's scope is limited to interchange patents and would not apply to games, conversion applications, etc. It preserves the incentive to innovate, while preserving the tradeoffs that U.S. IP law maintains in exchange for exclusivity. It also supports the creation of competitive markets, by establishing the requirements for a competitive landscape.
Such a patent may also foster innovation by removing the temptation for incumbent companies to preserve vendor lock situations over coming up with new innovations making the situation analogous to the pharmaceutical industry where keeping the drug development pipeline full is crucial since patent protection expires on a regular basis. Though the recent patent grant, to Clarinex a new form of Claritin, suggests that the pharmaceutical industry is mimicking the software industry instead of the other way around. If we start getting marketed Viagra XP or Claritin 2002 we will definitely know that that is the case.
So the answer to the innovation question may rest on acknowledging the special properties of software both possessing utility and expression in different contexts. The proposals above suggest ways where specifications could be made public yet still allow companies to benefit from a limited grant of exclusivity for their efforts. The proposals are in line with protections of existing IP and in the spirit of fostering further innovation that the constitution intended.
Conclusions
If the purpose of anti-trust remedy is to restore competition to markets, a form of intellectual protection needs to be created that fosters innovation in the early stages, yet benefits the public when it becomes ubiquitous and in common usage. Trademark law offers prior precedent where intellectual property can be forced into the public domain. However such drastic action may seem punitive after the fact. Perhaps instead, a new class of patents should be created to accommodate software or standards of interchange. Patents provide the benefit of exclusivity in exchange for disclosure to foster future innovation.
Information markets are new and the special conditions they impose are just being understood. New types of protection are created to handle changes in technology as witnessed by plant patents and design patents. What is proposed is a codification and clarification to return true innovation to the software market place.
In the end this is not an economic question but a societal question as to what type of software markets we wish to have and what tradeoffs and limits we are willing to accept to create those markets.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to David Franson for reviewing an early draft and offering helpful comments and criticisms.
In direct opposition to my mostly pro-Microsoft stances, I am of the opinion that widely used formats, no matter what the licensing restrictions, ought to be forcibly placed into the public domain by law. This includes various compression schemes such as Sorenson used in QuickTime.
When medicine companies patent a product, they are able to keep the patent for several years and therefore make a large profit. After their period is up, their monopoly is over, and other companies are able to produce the same product for competition. Maybe file formats should be handled the same way?
When the company that created them no longer exists. At the moment, I'm trying to convert about 20 gigs of obsolete files to a modern format. Apparently no one knows anything about the old format, but for some reason we are paying a company for "support", and they aren't at all interested in helping me with the conversion. Yeah, I can't say that I blame them, but if I do it myself could I be violating the law (U.S.)? Being forced to reverse engineer something is bad enough, having the lawyers tell you it might be illegal or a DMCA violation or something is enough to make you want to pull your hair out. Maybe we don't have the best lawyers in the world, but unless you work for a tech company how up to speed are YOUR lawyers on this? Especially with Hollings cranking out new bills... So, in my opinion, hell yes there should be an experation date! There is no logical reason why trying to convert a 25 year old format when no one else seems to know how should present a legal issue.
The question is not when a proprietary file format should be made public domain. The question we should be asking is whether our tax dollars should be spent on software that produces proprietary format files.
I think that the U.S. government should phase out all proprietary format software purchasing, forcing vendors to make the file formats open standards if they want to do business with the U.S. government.
While I am not opposed to government legislating business behavior, I would prefer that the free market be allowed to work so long as the consumer will not suffer for it.
Companies with virtual monopolies, like Microsoft, should be required to place their file formats in the public domain (make them public and free). Otherwise, monopolies can use file formats to compete unfairly.
One problem with putting the Microsoft Word file formats in the public domain is that the "file formats" include all of MS Word's quirkiness and bugs that affect the way documents are stored. These would have to be carefully documented, also.
A file encoding scheme is protectable by patent. This makes file formats proprietary for as long as their patents are effective. To me this seems fair. If I create a file format and want it to be adopted as a standard, I will make it public domain or else adopt a liberal licensing scheme. On the other hand if I stand to make money from this file format, then I have to guard it much more closely - but then risk missing out on industry adoption. I don't see anything wrong with this system.
I think they should always put them in public domain.
Why not?
If people use an open source format and refuse to accept documents in a proprietary fomat then the point is mute. Instead of bitching about company xyz (or MS), start using programs that utilize open formats right now.
I guess it takes balls, and a LACK of apathy to start demanding that documents sent to you aren't in foo.fooo format. Balls are in short supply in the "corporate" world where apathy reigns supreme at the moment.
BTW, if you e-mail me, you e-mail will bounce if it's not a text or html message. It's a start for me. How about you?
cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
I generally dislike proprietary file formats. All file formats should be standardized. Currently there are many companies (MS, Adobe, etc.) who make money because their file format is the standard and they are the only ones who make software that can deal with that file format. If all file formats were standardized then there would be no problems of not being able to read someone elses file. And you would be able to choose from a variety of applications for dealing with those files. So while your friend may like the full featured word processor of doom, and you like the very lite textpad, if their is a universal standard for word processing documents you can read his file and he can read it after you edit it. In the end the companies that make the best software will win, not the companies that own the file formats.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
It seems that a large part of the original article attempts to make comparisons between medicines and document file formats. The first thought that comes to my mind is that it's not a valid comparison at all - simply because medicines are subject to government regulation and file formats aren't.
Personally, I believe the complaints about filetypes remaining proprietary long after the original developers have a use for them is just one more illustration of a larger issue. Copyrights on computer software are being granted for excessively long periods of time. Unlike "traditional" works (such as a fiction novel), a piece of software isn't likely to be marketable for more than a few years. If there really is any difference between "digital media" and "traditional media" that requires updated laws, this is it.
I think the current laws are quite workable to cover patents, copyrights, and trademarks for computer software/hardware - with this one exception. There's really no compelling reason to grant a software author (or hardware designer) exclusive rights to their work beyond the window of "financial opportunity" they can enjoy from it.
as soon as somebody figures them out and posts them on www.wotsit.org
-- OMFG = Oh My Floatse Goatse
Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not entirely sure how legally a file format can be public after a (relatively) short period of time such as 25 years. Most software methods and formats are copyrighted, not patented. They last a billion years, and yes, even after the company is dead. Few companies patent software for reasons I'm sure we've read on /. a billion times over. So, yeah, it sucks that file formats are lining the pockets of companies for a long time, but the alternative is to make ludicrous exceptions to copyright law. After file format protection goes, it's only a matter of time before the next big thing loses its protection as well...
Basically, I do think file formats should always be generic, as soon as there is a good demand for it. However, I work as a computer programmer and I can tell small companies wouldn't always be glad that their formats would be used by their competitors.
That said, if a company specifically bases its edge on the competition by the specificity, uniqueness and closeness of their file format, that company is in big trouble IMHO. For security and encryption, well, if you need encryption, use strong one!
This question leaves me thinking about the algorithm question. I am a strong believer what makes a good software is not the unique algorithms that are used in it... it's HOW they use them. And as such, I think algorithms, _all_ algorithms, should be open-sourced, for the same reason as the file format.
My 2 cents
Mike
Maybe file formats should be handled the same way [as patented pharmaceuticals]?
Actually, they are. Apple/Sorenson's video codec (used in .mov) is patented. Fraunhofer's MP3 audio codec (used in .mp3) is patented. Unisys's LZW still-image codec (used in .gif) is patented. Iterated Systems's fractal-transform still-image codec is patented.
Will I retire or break 10K?
My comment (below) was entered as a reply to a comment that didn't exist when I began to write! I've been noticing numerous software failures like this at Slashdot. It appears to be database failures. Sometimes karma points are not added. Sometimes comments appear in a different order than the original order.
My comment:
Companies with virtual monopolies, like Microsoft, should be required to place their file formats in the public domain (make them public and free). Otherwise, monopolies can use file formats to compete unfairly.
One problem with putting the Microsoft Word file formats in the public domain is that the "file formats" include all of MS Word's quirkiness and bugs that affect the way documents are stored. These would have to be carefully documented, also.
The solution to this problem isn't to violate the property rights of the owner of the format but to simply refuse to use it.
I respectfully beg to disagree.
The very idea of "forcibly placing" ones work into the "public domain by law" is quite distasteful.
If you spent 10 years developing a superior compression routine because you were sure it would revolutionize the graphics industry, wouldn't you expect to have some ability to control the sale of your work afterwards? I sure as hell would. I didn't invest 10 years of my life on a project just to have governmnet rip it away from me and say "Sorry pal, we're forcing that into the public domain."
On the other hand, as I already posted here - I do think the copyright protection on digital works should expire after a limited time period. (Let's say we agree that 5 years is more than adequate?) This is all the time a developer should ever need as a "window" to make all the money he or she can from their work. After that, the balance shifts.... It causes more problems than it solves to let the developer retain rights to the old code. By now, he/she has surely developed something newer/fresher, because it's no longer possible to make a profit from the 5 year old software.
[analogy between car tyres and video codecs]
You can drive down the street with any decent set of tyres; in general (excepting extreme road conditions), you don't have to match your tyres to the road. On the other hand, you can't watch a particular file with just any codec; it has to be able to understand the particular format of compressed data.
Sorenson isn't a file format
ASCII isn't a file format either, but both Sorenson Video and ASCII (as encodings) share the characteristics of a file format that apply to the present discussion.
Will I retire or break 10K?
As a semi-pro graphics artist, I really hate proprietary stock image formats. I can understand their desire to curb rampant copying, but I also dislike the lack of interoperability.
One example is the SNX format used by the Second Nature company for their screen saver images. I've purchased the discs, I would like to use them on Linux, not the native Windows.
A worse example is the Hemera HPI format used for their stock "photo objects." These are 8 CD sets of about 50,000 images in a proprietary 24bpp + alpha channel format. Something which TIFF or PNG formats handle very well. Every time I want to use an image, I have to load up Windows, use their proprietary image search and export tool.
It's my estimation that in the long run, inconvenience added through proprietary "protections" will cost these royalty-free image companies far more sales than the illicit warez-ing of their content. And what happens when those stock companies are not around to support their proprietary converters? One Windows update and users are cut off from the image libraries which should be simple to access.
[
The comment above was posted as a reply to the story, not as a reply to another comment. Slashcode is failing!
having the lawyers tell you it might be illegal or a DMCA violation
The DMCA's circumvention ban makes an explicit exemption regarding reverse engineering for purposes of interoperability (17 USC 1201(f)).
So, in my opinion, hell yes there should be an experation date! There is no logical reason why trying to convert a 25 year old format when no one else seems to know how should present a legal issue.
If we were to allow (well-thought-out) software patents, this wouldn't be a problem, as any 20-year-old invention (in the USA, patents last up to filing date + 20 years) would be described in great detail.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Exactly! Every democratic government has a duty to use open file formats.
I personaly think file formats should be standards, that way you choose software not based on what's compatible with your existing files, but what works best for you, whether that be feature set, interface, price, whatever. It should also make things much more competative, since all (like) programs will automaticly be able to read everyone elses data, as they'll be essentialy be the same.
You can even provide a mechanism with the file format standard to allow extensions so that programs can store pseudo proprietery data in the files too, so long as the format of that pseudo proprietry data is made available to everyone else (I'm thinking extra information not needed to actualy render the data containted in the file, but which acts as an extra helper or pointer for it).
If you think about all like applications essentialy store the same data, so you could have a Standard File Format for say word processor documents, one for spreadsheets, etc...you could of course just combine them all into one massive standard and used data IDs to identify what kind of data is in the file...which would open the possibility to have a single file containing multi-application data, which is independant, but related (great for distributing project files).
Just some random thoughts.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
It funny how some people come up with ideas to reduce the technical tools a corporation uses to monopolise over its market. Proprietary closed source formats is a clever trick. What I don't like in your argument is that you propose a change in the way things work, i.e. you would be very happy seeing your proposal being enforced.
What is so remarkable about socialist scum suckers is that they get really sweaty to invent tools to disallow markets becoming sucessfull. I will propose that to you: you and your mates, that share your ideas, can create an alternative software market with open standards, open software, and *cough* shared wives as well. Buy buy scum.
I'm not entirely sure how legally a file format can be public after a (relatively) short period of time such as 25 years. Most software methods and formats are copyrighted, not patented.
A copyright does not "protect" a proprietary software publisher from a third party reverse-engineering the file format and another third party creating interoperable tools. Neither does the DMCA's circumvention ban (17 USC 1201(f)). Only a patent can do that, and in the USA, a patent lasts filing date + 20 years.
Will I retire or break 10K?
in medicine this model still has some ethical issues but its probably the best way in a capitalistic society and would work well for file formats.
The article says "Asprin", but the word is "aspirin".
If I create a file format and want it to be adopted as a standard, I will make it public domain or else adopt a liberal licensing scheme.
And then, once you're the market leader, terminate all the royalty-free licenses.
Will I retire or break 10K?
A: When they are created.
Nathan's blog
In early versions of PKZIP for DOS, there was a file named "DEDICATE.DOC" (actually a plain text file, not a Word document; MS Word hadn't usurped that extension in those days). The contents of this file for the version 1.1 release follows:
Dedication
----------
The file format of the files created by these programs, which file format
is original with the first release of this software, is hereby dedicated to
the public domain. Further, the filename extension of ".ZIP", first used in
connection with data compression software on the first release of this
software, is also hereby dedicated to the public domain, with the fervent
and sincere hope that it will not be attempted to be appropriated by anyone
else for their exclusive use, but rather that it will be used to refer to
data compression and librarying software in general, of a class or type
which creates files having a format generally compatible with this
software.
Of course, the fact that the file format (and application note) for this program was made freely available and usable to all, allowed numerous other companies to make their own ZIP compatible programs, many of them financially more successful than PKZIP. But that's another story...
- Mike
If any innovation be forced into free/public use (or at least for non-profit applications) once the patent holder earns a reasonable amount off it. i dont know if that makes any sense.. but it does to me... take it or leave it..
File formats should be proprietary indefinitely unless granted by author. You fucking open source zealots make me sick, trying to get honest to goodness proprietary software forced into the public domain. Shame on you shitfuckers.
If this comment is posted as a reply to another comment, there is an error in the Slashdot software. This comment was posted as a reply to the story.
Is it via a plugin in your illustration software that allows embedding only?
Or, does it convert from their format into something more usable?
If it does the latter, seems the first thing I'd do is use a standard Windows macro program to automate the process of extracting images, and let it run overnight.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Before you get on your libertarian high horse, stop pretending that there are no other government interventions at work here. When you get all riled up that the government is "willing to use force, or hire someone else to use force, against someone whose only relevant action has been" to reverse-engineer a popular file format, or to duplicate a copyrighted work, then you can start beating the drum about forcing file formats open.
And anyway, if the formats weren't copyrightable, the companies would still have the option of keeping them a trade secret. Force is not necessarily implied anywhere here, unlike in the DMCA, which provides no alternatives for the users---if you're blind and want to listen to an eBook, say, tough noogies.
But then again, you seem to be shilling for the corporations instead of the users.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Quoth:
intellectual property law as specified in the constitution ...
Which constituion was this, again?
Exclusivity is critical for extreme profitability
This would explain why there is only one car maker in the world.
I couldn't be bothered to read the "click here to read more" rest after seeing the above whoppers.
Coca-Cola is a good example of a proprietary "format." Their recipe for Coke is a company secret. They don't have it Registered because that would require they register the formula (where everyone would be able to see it). So Coke has simply relied on their ability to keep the formula secret.
The implications of requiring a company to release the specifications of their file format, would be much further reaching. Imagine Pepsi lobbying for Coca-Cola to open up their formula, because it's been proprietary for however-many years.
We tend to view the technology industry in a vaccum. But in fact, many discussions like this have already been resolved in the "real world."
The market needs to drive these things. If corporations feel safe using a proprietary format, let them use it. Then let them get bit on the ass for it several years later when they can't read their historical documents with the latest version of their proprietary software. Eventually, the market will demand open formats. In fact, there seems to be evidence (no, I can't cite, you'll just have to trust me or do your own research) that this is already happening.
Microsoft obtained a patent on the ASF (Active Stream Format) audio file format on March 21, 2000. The patent is entitled: "Active stream format for holding multiple media streams."
Here is the abstract:
An active stream format is defined and adopted for a logical structure that encapsulates multiple data streams. The data streams may be of different media. The data of the data streams is partitioned into packets that are suitable for transmission over a transport medium. The packets may include error correcting information. The packets may also include clock licenses for dictating the advancement of a clock when the data streams are rendered. The format of ASF facilitates flexibility and choice of packet size and in specifying maximum bit rate at which data may be rendered. Error concealment strategies may be employed in the packetization of data to distribute portions of samples to multiple packets. Property information may be replicated and stored in separate packets to enhance its error tolerance. The format facilitates dynamic definition of media types and the packetization of data in such dynamically defined data types within the format.
Microsoft forced Avery Lee, a free software developer to revoke support for the ASF format from his "VirtualDub" GPL-ed video editing/capture program. Here is Mr. Lee's description of his encounter with Microsoft (from Advogato article, referenced below):
"Today I received a polite phone call from a fellow at Microsoft who works in the Windows Media group. He informed me that Microsoft has intellectual property rights on the ASF format and told me that, although I had reverse engineered it, the implementation was still illegal since it infringed on Microsoft patents."
Linux World News aptly commented on the effect of file-format patents on the future of free software (article referenced below):
"Microsoft is claiming patent protection on a file format. It is not at all hard to see what could happen with an extension of that claim. Any serious word processor in the commercial world has to be able to cope, somehow, with the numerous variations of Microsoft's Word format. If that format were to come under patent protection, programs like StarOffice, ApplixWare, and WordPerfect could lose the ability to work with Word files. That would not bode well for their future market share.
Intellectual property laws increasingly look like the tool of choice for those who wish to fight against free software. The ability to patent file formats, if it stands up, adds greatly to the power of this weapon. This is a worrisome development indeed."
Seems to me the point of XML is to provide an interface for metadata- which is all a file format is, anyway- which is more readily usable. XML also includes the capability to store that "pseudo proprietary data" you mention as well.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
There may be many patents involved with products that also generate or use proprietary file formats but the patent itself can not protect the secrecy required.
And, why is that?
Patents and trade secrets are diametrically opposed to each other. You simply can not have a trade secret and a patent cover the same idea or concept.
The reason is that patents must fully disclose how to make the "object" and allow anyone following the patent information to do so. That is a fundamental requirement of a valid patent.
A trade secret on the other hand only works because that kind of information is keep from everyone else. So, the two concepts are fundamentally opposed.
That does not mean that software covered by a patent can not use proprietary and hidden formats. Rather it simply means that the file format is not covered by the patent.
It is certainly possible for a software program to be covered in part by a patent, covered in part by copyright and covered in part by a trade secret (non disclosed file formats). Copyrights might disclose enough information to "out" a file format but the entire source code does not to be part of the copyright application. Parts of it can easily be and usually are redacted to hide key parts. No doubt the code that actually generates the formats would be conveniently redacted out.
The real question is whether anyone should buy software that uses proprietary or non disclosed file formats. Clearly SUN (StarOffice) and OpenOffice.Org think it is a real advantage to not use a proprietary file format (XML). Microsoft thinks a proprietary one ties customers to their own product lines and thinks it is a great idea. But, it is only a great idea for the vendor not the customer. The customer would always be better off if a known format is being used and the known format is not proprietary. After all, the data belongs to the customer not the vendor of the code. And, the vendor should not taking any step which reduces the customers legitimate use of their own data. (Even if it strengthens the monopoly.)
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
I don't believe that a file structure, protocol, or grammar should be copyrightable or patentable. Such things are (in my opinion) ideas or concepts, rather than implementations. A particular header file, piece of documentation, or interpreter describing or processing such a structure is and should be covered by copyright; but I feel that the underlying data structures should not be, any more than a mathematical formula or physical law.
Should companies be forced to publish their internal data structures and protocols? In general, no -- we already have too many laws to control the behavior of people and organizations. But for external/shared data, I feel there is a good fair-use argument for requiring documentation: If you export or import the data, you [should] have an obligation to describe the relevant public syntax and external semantics. The omission of such documentation would be considered a product failure, and would leave the vendor open to warranty issues, by failing to deliver a product that performs as advertised. "No documentation? Give me my money back."
Bottom line: I think it should be impossible for a vendor to obtain IP protection over a data structure or similar metadata; I think that a vendor should be expected (but not compelled except by market forces) to document external interfaces; and I think that a vendor should only be able to cling to a proprietary format as a trade secret, i.e. it should not be possible to prevent reverse engineering.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
Monopolies imply ubiquity.
Ubiquity may imply generic-ness as a 'de-facto public standard'.
If that's the case, MS Office may well already be a generic public standard and the People may be well within their rights to revoke its special protection as a patented, trademarked, or copyrighted entity.
For that matter, this could apply to ANY kind of deliberate technological obfuscation from the CD and DVD 'red book' up through and including all of the MS office file formats and the Win32 API's.
If this were the case, it would provide the safety valve that we need to prevent the growth of dangerous technological institutions without bounds - feel free to make yourself popular, but make yourself UNFAIRLY popular and the People will take back their rights of fair use.
It's nice to say that we should make formats open source, but the level of training required to switch to something as simple as HTML over MS-Word would be ridiculous. Anybody that works desktop support knows that users have a hard enough time finding the "any" key, and that changing their little world even a little bit would destroy whatever minimal productivity they had. My Gov't department considered the HTML switch, but didn't do it simply because linked files (images) were kept in seperate files. The pilot program had emails flying all over the place with broken links and absolute links to forbidden locations and all sorts of badness.
But then again, you seem to be shilling for the corporations instead of the users.
You seem to have problems with reading comprehension. Force is clearly what is being discussed, otherwise the topic would be "How can file format owners be persuaded to voluntarily make them public?"
The only entities I'm "shilling" for are those who benefit from respect for property rights -- everyone, in other words. If you argue today for violating the property rights of file format owners, you have no moral ground to stand on tomorrow when people with guns come to "liberate" your money, computer, car, or house for "the public good."
"These are some ideas on when and how file formats should enter the public domain, just like trademarks do when they become "generic"."
They should never leave the public domain. The notion that file formats should be patentable is ludicrous.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Your post makes no sense. Are you arguing that the Constitution doesn't address intellectual property? Or are you arguing that automakers are "extremely profitable"?
Either argument is false.
Companies should be bound by law to maintain DTDs and XML converters for their proprietary formats.
Every time they change format, they MUST provide a converter. That would take care of the content loss every damn time M$ changes its fuckin' formats.
The last thing a company does before filing for Chapter 11 is provide the converter WITH their filing.
I've had to carry some files through "upgrade" after "upgrade."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I suppose in the current corrupt state of patents, someone might be able to get a patent on a particular way of storing data. Audio/Video codecs might have more justification. Copyright is not available -- the datafile is a mixture of works of the format creators and the data providers.
As a simple matter of prudence, just say NO! Why trust your important data to some proprietary format you cannot unlock if the company goes belly up or otherwise becomes unwilling to provide? Isn't the suffering of MS-Word users enough warning?
Others have already covered the difference between a format and a codec, so I don't need to go into it here.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Basically, the parent post is pointing out that this clause is highly contingent on the first part of the clause "to promote the progress of science and useful arts...." In other words, this isn't a right like Freedom of Speech, which is granted even without progress for anything or anyone, (and is only limited in certain cases where there is a direct threat to society, and even then, it isn't limited easily).
Intellectual property however, is not such a right and is (should be) only granted for the purpose of promoting progress in the arts and sciences. While it's hard to determine exactly which piece of art leads to progress, and therefore we should not grant copyright based on the merit of a work, we *should* grant copyright for a certain amount of time, as incentive, and no more time than necessary. 70 years past the death of the author is extremely excessive. Even 70 years alone is excessive.
To put it into perspective, back then it was only 14 years, and copyright should diminish with technology, not increase, since technology decreases the amount of time to bring something to market and for people to hear about it.
Actually, it's been shown that medical research is always just as effective, if not more effective, when it is funded by public dollars and not corporate sponsors. Therefore, we should fund medical research with public dollars, and end medical patents, since we end up paying 8 times what we would have if we developed it with public research.
The FORCE aspect is right, but you fail to be specific about what actions is being compelled. These details are the heart of the argument and should not be glossed over.
And the best way the government can accomplish this is not by passing a law -- I am strongly against the government taking something that a company feels is proprietary and simply making it public. But, it could be accomplished simply by stating that the government itself will only use documented formats for data, which will require all major software vendors to document theirs.
AND just to clarify, this is not saying that all formats should be standardized or designed by committee or only changed with public approval...companies can make whatever format they want and change it whenever they want, as long as they document it.
So for this I came up with the idea of the Open Data Format Initiative...which I have done nothing with yet, but might one of these years. I even bounced the idea off a few politicians!
- adam
BoyPlankton replies: I really believe that if you are going to impose a restriction like this against MS then you should impose it industry-wide. Otherwise, future virtual monopolies will use file formats to compete unfairly.
It's been clearly demonstrated that Microsoft can and does use its monopoly power abusively. No, it's not illegal to be a monopoly. But yes, it is illegal to abuse your position as a monopoly. That's what the Sherman Anti-Trust act is all about.
You can't use some prior-restraint against a company that might become a monopoly because it would be "unfair" to a convicted abusive monopolist. At best that's being an apologist for abusive monopolies.
At the very least Microsoft should be forced to open their file formats and APIs, fully documented, in the interest of interoperability with other platforms. It has been shown time and time again that they will otherwise abuse their position as a monopoly to crush other companies and projects (Dr. DOS, PC-DOS, Netscape, Samba). This clearly should be part of the remedy phase of the trial. Let's remember - they've already been convicted. Now we're looking at remedies that are supposed to preclude them from engaging in such behaviour in the future. Clearly, a promise to do so is woefully inadequate.
IMHO, All Intellectual Property, 25 years after the death of the creator/IP holder or 75 years after first publication in any event. Otherwise Disney, AOL-Time-Warner, and a handful of other companies will own our culture. The Constitution makes a very specific provision for copyright expiration, the purpose of copyrights, and the purpose of expiring them for the benefit of the public.
I think it's helpful to make this distinction because the formats can easily be made public domain, whereas the codecs are usually subject to patents and/or require licensing.
It may be useful to make this distinction, and arguably modular file formats can lead to more versatile applications and some reuse of code.
However, the problem remains: a file containing parts encoded in a proprietary format remains largely useless to you unless you have access to the proprietary codec as well.
Reading and writing files is one thing, doing something useful with them is another.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
The very idea of "forcibly placing" ones work into the "public domain by law" is quite distasteful.
Um, that's exactly what a patent is, and does. You document your method in detail for all to see, and in exchange, you can decide who uses the method for a limited amount of time. After the patent expires, potentially everyone benefits from your documentation freely.
[
It think, the industry is becoming more and more aware of the dangers of proprietary file formats.
Beeing an mechanical engineer myself, I have the problem every single day when designing in CAD. Ever tried to convert a model from Pro/Engineer to CATIA? Or EMS to IDEAS? Or...
Sure, after only some decades, they came up with exchange formats like the teethless IGES which everybody can interpret it's own way. IGES in Pro/E flavor (i.e. created by Pro/E in the way they thought is right) cannot be read by CATIA and IGES in CATIA flavor cannot be read by Pro/E. (Forget the ridiculus AutoDesk products, nobody want to design in them anyway, so no reason for data exchange...)
In recent years, the industry has become aware of the huge amount of time and money they spend on dealing with proprietary file formats and they have pushed for better standardized formats like STEP and VDA-FS. In fact, they have not only pushed, but done the job themselves...
One problem though: IGES, STEP and VDA-FS are still not public domain, they are owned by certain groups and will cost money as soon as it is feasible. So, the latest trend is XML - and this time, it's gonna be right!
BTW: One very exiting project is using XML for exchanging dynamic models between simulation programs, like this approach at my own university in Linköping, Sweden.
Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)
However, slashdot uses gifs! Please moderatre him down for being a troll, and bitchslap him for me, CmdrTaco!
I can't imagine any kind of formats being
proprietary NOW, software formats structure have
been in thousands of structures in the military,
government, universities, and corp.s. 3D volume
holographic optical storage would probably
offer the greatest avenue for exploration
along this lines.
And the question is.. what gov't would do this? Not every thing is developed in the USA. So if you develop a new format in India, how can any one forcibly put it into public domain?
Now aspirin is a special case. The *patent* on aspirin was held by Bayer (a German company) and expired around the beginning of World War I. However Bayer still held the *trademark* on the name aspirin. But the US government stripped it from Bayer as part of the treaty ending the war. This is a quote from a longer article (about Cipro, also owned by Bayer and under patent suspension threat from the US gov):
The Alien Property Custodian, a wartime office charged with seizing enemy-owned assets on U.S. territory, was entitled to confiscate all German property -- intellectual and physical -- and that included the Bayer and Aspirin names. On Dec. 12, 1918, when the war had ended, all of Bayer's assets, including the names, were auctioned off to an American company, Sterling Drug.
In the 1920s, American courts dealt a huge blow to Sterling when it allowed Aspirin to be used as a generic term at the retail level. Other companies began selling the compound under that name, capitalizing on Bayer's huge advertising campaign initiated before the Great War. In Germany, Canada and many other countries, Aspirin is still a trademark (hence the capital A) and if you ask a pharmacist for aspirin, you will get Bayer Aspirin.
ANYWAY having said all that I think it is silly to say that because file formats are used a lot, they may become generic. A lot of people drink Coke, and nobody is saying its formula is about to become generic.
- adam
Right more or less - its a poor way to address the issue.
I would suggest as an alternative a Users Union - which would refuse to embrace or use file formats which are not Public Domain.
The JPEG Joint Photographers Group is a successful example. I think it would be in the people's interest for government to have an outstanding policy that they should use and convert to public formats if at all possible.
One possible route would be to leverage the freedom of information act by requesting documents in "public" formats. It may be a stretch, but i think the argument could be made under the FIA that data must be a. made available in the format best suited to the data and b. the only good format is an open format.
Anyway - courts are the fastest way to change things.
AIK
I don't think we should focus on forcing proprietary formats into public domain. Instead, we should make an effort to aquire and use software that uses open formats, and we should encourage others to so the same.
I'd like to see the use of open formats touted as a feature to the consumer, and for consumers to think of it as desirable.
But to be honest, the IT bods should know better than to keep their companies crown jewels locked in a safe that they will only be able to open for a certain amount of time.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
DWG is the file format used to store AutoCAD drawings. AutoCAD, arguably, is the most popular piece of drafting software for the PC. How does AutoCAD maintain it's sales of ever more complicated releases?
A proprietary file format. Since many architectural firms have large databases of AutoCAD drawings they need to use tools that will read their previous work. Sure, DWG has been reverse-engineered a couple times by other parties, but always with mixed results.
Thus firms are a stuck buying AutoCAD to access and modify their drawings.
There have been stabs at cross-application/platform drawing formats (DXF) but they are quite limited compared to DWG.
Actually, the situation reminds me a lot of MS-Word's DOC format.
we really should do away with extensions entirely and just focus on the content and file types. I think the only OS's that require extensions are the microsoft kind
You're absolutely right.
However, since it is clearly not beneficial to society to encourage these sorts of works to remain secrets, the government should afford the creators not a single atom of legal protection. If someone should reverse engineer the format and make it public, the original creator should be totally out of luck.
As an enticement to do what we want -- to have that work be in the public domain -- we should extend some protections. This is in fact the way that patents and copyrights work.
Although the govt. certainly can force works into the public domain, they just have to fairly compensate the author. That's how eminent domain operates; in an emergency that is somewhat difficult to imagine with regards to file formats, they can also force the author to open them, e.g. in order to save lives or property. It's the same thinking that permits houses to be destroyed in order to contain fires in cities if it's really felt necessary.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I didn't invest 10 years of my life on a project just to have governmnet rip it away from me and say "Sorry pal, we're forcing that into the public domain."
The question, though, is whether your right to profit outweighs society's interest in being able to exchange data without paying outrageous prices for software, the most obvious example being Word doc files. The proprietary file format is what keeps people locked into Word, and it costs our government, businesses, schools and individuals billions of dollars annually. All that for the profit of one company.
You might spend 10 years creating a file format, but the bottom line is that to make money off of it, it has to be used with some program that customers use to store, create or manipulate data that they own - they should not be restricted in ways that they can access that data, which is the upshot of a proprietary file format. I agree that people should have the right to profit from their inventions, but not in a situation that puts the majority of society at a severe disadvantage.
Also - many people would argue that putting file formats in the public domain would have a "chilling effect" on the development of new file formats. I heartily disagree with that. We've already seen a number of file formats developed for Open Source / Free Software programs, or developed by consortiums where many universities and businesses sponsor the development of standards for their mutual interest. This is far preferable to the development of formats by companies that then try to monopolize a market and charge outrageous prices for their software. Yes, it might slow down development, but is that a bad thing? I think not. The cost of upgrading software to keep up with software upgrades that are driven by profit motives instead of actual technological necessity is draining the budgets of schools, businesses and individuals who have to keep up with this endless cycle. Something that would slow this cycle would be of enormous benefit to the vast majority of society - it would be harmful only to those companies like Microsoft that depend on perpetual upgrades for revenue. I can't say I'd weep for them.
This discussion is particularly timely now that Microsoft is trying to pioneer subscription software. If you can't buy the program outright, and a company can shut off your access to data you own at any time, the format should be open to allow people access to their data through other means. I can easily see a scenario with Microsoft holding businesses hostage and raising their subscription prices every six months.
Even 5 years is too long to wait to be able to get at your own data.
The article brings up some interesting points but over-complicates the issue buy large magnitudes. Personally, once you cross into the digital realm, your copywrite is largely dependent on everybody else's good will as whatever you do can be easily dissected and reproduced. If you or time makes your format harder to use than everybody elses, it will become open source whether you like it or not (assuming popularity). This is true for all formats, including everybodies whipping boy, Microsoft. The Parent here is right. Market does drive these issues and should/will continue to because it's self regulating.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The "exclusivity" caused by copyright and applied to the actual product is sufficient to give the format creator sufficient advantage already -- what patents and trade secrets on formats (as opposed to code being copyrighted) do is giving an additional protection against competitors or even collaboration that was never the intention of copyright or even patent laws.
It's a side effect that benefits copyright owners, however this effect is accidental, unintentional (where were no file formats when law was written), and counterproductive, so the right way to remove this unnecessary additional protection is to strip it from all means that this protection can be achieved through. If it will be illegal to use patent protection against interoperable software products, or prosecute against trade secret disclosure made for interoperability purpose, copyright and patents will be still there, but interoperability will get a special protection against patents and trade secrets. It will be still illegal to copy someone's else code into a product without a permission, but, say, an employee disclosing a format that company is unwilling to publish will not be afraid of prosecution because trade secret won't even exist for that kind of information.
In fact most of companies will benefit from this "blanket" exemption of patents and trade secrets protection for interoperability purpose, they protect those things because other have them, but they also are stuck with unreasonable licenses that stem from this protection, so most of them will better off if this protection will be lifted. Ones that won't, are most likely not benefitting anyone else anyway, and it's not the copyright and patent law's purpose to encourage parasitic behavior.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Eventually, the market will demand open formats. In fact, there seems to be evidence (no, I can't cite, you'll just have to trust me or do your own research) that this is already happening.
Bullshit. When the company has a monopoly the market has no choice. The one thing most "free market" advocates fail to grasp is that the marked forces cease to work once monopoly is established. Proprietary file formats amount to an unlimited monopoly. At least with copyrights and patents the monopoly is limited in duration.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
When I tried to create format for storing some data,
I preferred XML. But my data contained binary data.
So I've chosen the following:
Length of XML part bzip2-ed
Length of data part bzip2-ed
Length of XML part uncompressed
Length of data part uncompressed
So I created binary package with clear XML information about it.
For example there could be
tags to refer to particular elements of that binary package.
The benefit of such approach is that data stays in atomic, solid package and contain all information about itself.
Any ideas about is that good or bad?
I think companies should follow this way when
dealing with binary/text data.
People miss the point on intellectual output. By its very nature, it is already and automatically copiable and public. The state, through copyright law or patent law, agrees to offer artificial protections, so as to induce creators to create. This is a fiction we all agree to for social purposes.
A government can "force" a file format -- or a Disney movie, for that matter -- into the "public dmain" by simply not enforcing the copyright. Copyright is not a passive thing intrinsic to a creative work. It is an active, volitional thing that requires the complicity of the courts (and by extension the rest of the government) to be effective.
Look at what goes on in all the "pirate" nations (such as, say, the US in 1890).
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
It's already been established that a company can't own a set of op codes for a cpu. File formats should certainly have the same protection, the data they contain almost always does not belong to the company that created the format; such a company should not be able to hold the data prisoner because only they can access the format.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Yeah, but no one forces you to file for patents. You could keep your invention a trade secret instead (like Sorenson does).
Where? Do you have any links?
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
Instead of whining about successful companies, come up with your own technology and get companies to add support it. In this case come up with a universal file formats for office applications. Then pressure companies to add support for the universal file formats along with their own. That would be Win-Win for everyone.
Bottom line let the end user choose the file format they want to use. Choice is a good thing.
I don't want data created at taxypayer expense to be stored in your proprietary format.
What happens when you are no longer there to support the program and adapt it to new hardware and operating systems?
What happens if, in ten years, you decide that you'd rather license your software for $10,000 per year rather than $50? The government will either have to pay it or lose access to the data that the taxpayers paid for the creation of.
I think that you should be able to store data in any format that you choose, but I don't think that the government should license your software unless it stores data in an open format that encourages competition and interoperability.
This idea is evil. A file format is a technique used to store data. This suggestion is simply piking a specific area of patents and deciding that it is "too important" to fall under the regular patent statutes.
Not only that, but by placing it in the public domain, it is theft of the copyright holder. Many times here folks have wished the GNU lawyers would test out the GPL in court. How would it look to the outside world if the FFF sued to stop an "open source" like plan? I bet RMS' head will spin around when he sees this idea. ESR may have a brain hemmorhage -- somebody in Pennsylvania should check on him after this weekend.
And the nonsense above about monopolies? The only monopolies that can exist are created by law. Professional baseball is a monopoly; Microsoft is just the current market dominant player. Here's how you can check -- if guys with guns are allowed to come for you because you buy a different product or service than "A", it's a monopoly.
First, nobody has a *right* to profit, merely the right to own and profit from one's work if other people freely choose to pay for it. Second, nothing I do as an inventor of a file format blocks "society's interest" in being able to exchange data. All that's required is that "society" invent an alternative format.
The proprietary file format is what keeps people locked into Word ...
Word comes with various data export formats, and you or anybody else can convert all of your Word files to plain text, HTML, or several other data formats *right now*.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
Yes, but a patent gives you exclusive rights for a period of time to allow you (among other things) to recoup the cost of development. If I lose any chance to reap the benefits of my labor, then why should I bother?
I think there are two issues here. One is making the format descriptions publicly available. Another is forbidding other people from writing programs that are able to read and/or write those formats.
If a format is still evolving, it's understandable that the people who created it don't want to deal with files written by other programs, that might do things that are "in spec" but that their "official" program still doesn't cope with very well (ex., images that are too large, etc.).
So they don't make the file format publicly available. But chances are, some people will be able to understand it even without any documentation. And in most situations they'll be able to read and write those files without using any of the original code, so copyrighting the code isn't enough. To make sure they don't have to deal with files generated by "unofficial" 3rd party software, the only solution is to copyright the format itself.
But (except for very specific cases, involving encryption) I don't see what harm comes to the original authors from people making programs that are able to read it. If something goes wrong with one of these programs (because the authors changed the format, for example), it's not their problem.
RMN
~~~
The heart of the issue is simple: respect for the rights of others. Either you have that respect or you are an unethical, immoral, poor excuse for a human being who should be either shunned, resisted, or terminated as appropriate to eliminate the threat you pose to decent people.
I don't think laws should be made even more complex (causing even more money to be spent on lawyers) just because of amazing stupidity of your example clients.
Works for me.
Not true at this point. There are many alternative formats to Word, but you cannot exchange data with a company that uses Word reliably. Since Word has a virtual monopoly the only alternatives are for a huge sea change where a majority of companies, government offices and individuals who use Word to switch to a different format and/or abandon Word or to be stuck with Word. The same is true of Excel and a number of other programs.
Word comes with various data export formats, and you or anybody else can convert all of your Word files to plain text, HTML, or several other data formats *right now*.
I suppose this may be true if you're talking about text information only. You cannot reliably export tables, formatting and other information. Since I consider formatting part of my data, your argument fails. In fact, you really can't reliably export to any of these formats if your document is very complicated. Again, as I mentioned earlier, even this is moot if Microsoft successfully switches to a subscription model where Word won't even start up if you're not currently subscribing.
Even if you could reliably convert all your information to another format, if 80% of the market is using a proprietary format that you cannot access without Word, you're pretty much up shit creek if you don't use Word, aren't you? If you're a supplier that wants to sell to Chrysler, and they want your pricing in Excel format - guess what? You've got to buck up for Excel. If a government office standardizes on a proprietary format, every supplier has to have that program. For my home use, I'm not locked in to Word or any proprietary program at all - until I want to write a book for a company like Osborne/McGraw-Hill that requires Word docs, or submit a resume to recruiters that are requiring Word docs. The features in Word aren't what keep people locked in to it - it's the file formats. I haven't met many people who actually like Word or any of the Office programs, they use them because the file formats are dominant and because Microsoft obfuscates the formats so much that it's virtually impossible for any other company to completely decipher the format so their program can reliably import and export the program.
Something like a .txt file (ASCII text) is pretty obvious.
.gif or .jpg? Did *you* create the world-changing .mp3? Do you even pay for the licensing fee for certain mp3 encoders I won't mention here?
.DOC! USE .DOC!" into your ear. (Last time I checked, Office also had great support for .rtf.)
.gif/etc. No one forces you to use .mp3. No one forces you to use any file format.
What of these graphics formats? What of audio formats?
Did *you* create the world-changing
How much of *your* life was taken with developing new and better formats?
STFU and realize that TANSTAAFL.
If you want 'free' file formats, create them and make them free. No one, despite whatever sick and twisted ideas you might have, is holding a gun to your head and shouting, "USE
No one forces you to use
Just because some company wants to save their data in a proprietary format, one that you don't have the brains to get working on Linux, well. That's their choice. You've no right to demand that file format be free, and you've no right to demand that they make their software availible for Linux.
There are probably a few reasons why companies like proprietary formats:
Companies like them so they can have control, ie,release a "reader" for free, release the "writer" application to make money.
Developers tend to like proprietary formats because generally they are written to be as fast and robust for their app as they can make them. Binary, dumps of memory, fast indexes, etc. Other programs not paying their salary generally take second stage.
Developers also like properietary formats since they can change them whenever they want, and not be bound to features that may/may not be used or work correctly.
In years gone by (like 5-10 years ago) proprietary formats were definitely a way of life. I worked at several companies where we came up with nice, ascii, editable, readable/parseable/writeable. You could easily discern the format. Start adding embedded graphics, sounds and movies, and opening a file would still be going on today. Cuz machines used to be slow. Really slow. So we usually had binary formats that would get our files to load as fast as possible in our application.
And we'd be too embarassed to share that with the world, Silly...
Plus, intellectual rights are intellectual rights. I don't want others to decide what they can do with the things I write. Time and money went into my format, and I can do what I want with it. If I want to put it into the public domain, that's my choice. If I want it proprietary, that's my choice, It was your choice to use my product.
If people want to exchange files between formats, the free market system should bring that about -- they should buy a program that supports "insert favorite exchange format here". If the government required this, as has been mentioned here elsewhere, it would be a win for everyone, I think.
I just hate it when people decide what to do with other people's work, whether it's music, movies, books or file formats.
If this was done by law or executive order or whatever is less important, although as you say the method might influence how permanent it is. But I think if the government even just said that government procurement people should favor documented data formats, Microsoft would have the Office spec available the next day (or the day after it got done complaining about the new rule).
- adam
Why are there so many posts of people demanding laws to force companies to open their file formats? That's just moronic. While you're at it, why don't you lobby for laws forcing everyone to go to church twice a week? The government, or anyone else for that matter, should have absolutely no control over matters like those. Proprietary file formats == MONEY. And last time I checked, MONEY == GOOD.
More typical slashdot propagand. People don't want to have your ideals forced upon them. If standard open file formats are really "better" than proprietary formats, software will eventually move in that direction, INCLUDING Microsoft. I have a feeling, however, that proprietary formats will continue to dominate for quite a while. Idiots.
Excellent comment, good writing.
It's possible for patents to cover certain algorithms required by a file format. GIF files, for example, use LZW encryption, which was patented by Sperry-Univac. But this patent really was not on the file format itself, which was trivial. Rather, it covered a process used to compress data. The specification for the file format just happened to require that the data be compressed via that process. (Had it allowed different compression methods, as does TIFF, the patent wouldn't have been an issue.) When the unknown CompuServe programmer who created the GIF format wrote the original specification, he probably would have chosen a different compression algorithm if he had realized that the patented algorithm would cause so many problems both for CompuServe and for its users. Alas, like many programmers, he was concerned with results, not with legal or business issues. By the time Sperry-Univac (which by then had become Unisys) became litigious and began to enforce the patent, the standard was ubiquitous. But, again, the problem here was caused not by the nature of the file format but by the algorithm used to prepare data for storage and transmission in that format.
The only situation I know of in which a company has attempted to patent the file format itself is when Coda Music Software patented certain aspects of the file formats used by its music software. No one knows whether these patents were very strong, because there was never a test case. Coda's software never dominated the market, and so competitors did not find a compelling need to support their file formats. The patent was never challenged, so we can only speculate as to its strength.
TO THE EDITOR:
With the Microsoft antitrust case so much in the news lately, and since Iowa is one of the nine states opting out of the DOJ settlement, I find it curious that all this media attention has missed one simple point: the government could end Microsoft's monopoly tommorow, with the stroke of a pen.
Governor Vilsack could simply sign an executive order that, henceforth all digital communication with the Sate of Iowa must be transmitted and stored in "open" (publicy documented, royalty free) file formats. Since Microsoft's popular Office file formats (.DOC, .XLS, .PPT) are propretary, they would be unacceptable under the new rule. Any email sent to any government agency with a DOC or XLS file attachment would be automatically returned, with a request to re-send the content in an open file format.
The downstream repercussions would be massive. It would eliminate the need for businesses and individuals to purchase Microsoft software, at least as far as State business is concerned, and would popularize the notion that "not everyone uses Microsoft." Within weeks, it would be common knowledge among computer users, that some people can't read DOC files, and you can easily get around this problem with Save-As.
The single biggest obstacle to Microsoft's competition is not its illegal business practices, but simple inertia -- everyone else uses Microsoft. And no business that hopes to stay in business would risk "turning off" a potential customer by requesting a different file format.
The State, however, can and should make that request. Transparency in government is a hallmark of modern democracy. When I am forced to purchase Microsoft products in order to view "public" documents, then the term "Microsoft Tax" is not just a metaphor, it's a disgrace.
--jrd
PS: Still no reply from Vilsack... :-/
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
"The question, though, is whether your right to profit outweighs society's interest in being able to exchange data without paying outrageous prices for software, the most obvious example being Word doc files."
I think society can do quite well with cinepak and indeo for the time being.
Although I have never seen a homeless person crying out for Sorenson so I could be wrong.
Let's see... Copyright and IP are grants by the several states. In essence... the works are already in public domain. Only there is a catch... the grant that is base of all copyright and IP legal turmoils.
The grant effectivelly forbids anyone else except the granted to search for profits thru the marketing of the granted Copyright/IP.
Even if the grant is automatic as it happend in most countries with copyright, it still is a grant.
Cheers...
Yes... and nothing avoids the existence of other inventors of the same stuff...
After all, after "discovered", a good quantity of "patents" are so trivial, that anyone with medium education in the sector can replicate and improve it!
Cheers...
If someone wants to reverse engineer your file format, they can do so. They have to figure out your datastructures, and the algorithms used to encode/decode them, and the way you make choices when confronted with optional ways of doing something.
Let me repeat: it's not just the structure, it's the algorithms used on those structures that need to be discovered to understand/properly interpret the file.
I don't think anyone can argue that implementations of algorithms are not protected under copyright, and sometimes under trade secret.
Thus, usefully 'documenting proprietary file formats' leads pretty directly to revelation of proprietary algorithmics, for most interesting files.
This is one of the things that Microsoft is antsy about in the SMB interoperability area. There is no protocol definition (akin to a file format), only piles of copyrighted, trade secret code that uses it and deals with all the necessary (and unnecessary) special cases.
The problem is that there are unanticipataed results from failure to use documented, open formats from the outset. People can't use other programs to use their data, which is a double edged sword. If the users didn't realize they made this choice, they could be screwed if the vendor goes under. If the vendor didn't think about it, and potential customers don't buy the program because they understand the implications, that is bad for the vendor.
It is not uncommon for users concerned about these sorts of things to demand escrow of source code to cover cases where the vendor does go under, and it is necessary to recover user data. How far such a demand will get you with Autodesk and Microsoft is hard to say-- probably not far. If you think they are going away, or are going to extort you for access to your data, maybe you should choose an alternative.
But the idea of forcing release of 'formats' is just absurd. They do embody significant intellectual property, and you can't make people give that up without cause and due process.
If you can convince them it is moral, and a good thing to do for business, that is a different thing altogether.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
First off, I think trying to make companies give up proprietary file formats is stupid, and a violation of free enterprise. Those "standards" are trade secrets, and in my opinion, forcing companies to give away trade secrets of any sort is a horrible precedent.
Second, what makes you think these companies even have a genuine specification of the format? They may have laid it out, but chances are that a few parts of the spec were tweaked while debugging. While those alterations may (hopefully) be internally consistent, trying to code from the spec would be a huge waste of time. The only way to guarantee true interoperability would be to have a copy of the program's source code.
Finally, I've heard a lot of talk about the files being "your data, you should own and control it, and you shouldn't be beholden to a software license". I think this is more of a problem with the intellectual property system today, where you can own a software package, but you can't really OWN it.
If you buy a piece of software and don't like their proprietary file format, reverse engineer it. If you're worried about the integrity of your data, export it.
That's a valid comment. In other words, we should find a better way of resolving the inequity of thew issue than a recourse to law. I wholly agree.
If this is true, then couldn't it be argued that [DeCSS] is a valid reverse engineering exercise for purposes of interoperability with the Linux operating system?
The difference in the DVD-file-format case is that DeCSS was first released as a Windows executable, useful for nothing but copying DVDs. The DeCSS developers should have finished the Linux kernel's UDF drivers before publicly releasing the DeCSS application.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Respect goes both ways. A file format should not deprive the owner of rights. Reverse engineering should be allowed. That's why the DMCA, which forbids reverse engineering of copyright protection, is a bad piece of legislation.
I posted something similar to shouldexist.org back then too. Just to share the thoughts.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
There is some truth to what you say but not exactly because you are never forced to apply for a patent. You willingly apply for the patent through which you, in turn, can derive royalties for a limited amount of time, while society also benefits because the technology is now publicly specified.
most file formats aren't exactly innovative.
B+tree was innovative when it was first used in a product. Most codecs designed for lossy compression of signals are innovative. However, I don't think Microsoft's patent on the ASF streaming file format was justified.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Because by the time you have a 90% market share and you still haven't recouped your costs you simply had a lousy bussiness plan, in that case patents aren't going to help....
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
I have spent a long long time trying to properly import MS Excel documents into Gnumeric. This requires reading serveral layers of formats to extract the raw data.
- ole : to get access to the files
- biff : to access the primary records
- escher : to handle embedded objects
plus other bits further up the food chain, like emf/wmf.
Reading the raw data is the least of our concerns. Understanding what it represents is quite another thing. A few years back MS tried to pull a fast one. They published some 'Developer Guides' for MS Excel (4 5 20 of some integer if they do not document how to map from the index to a colour. I'd estimate that the docs covered no more than 1/2 of the actual format.
Sticking all of the information into xml doesn't solve the problem. It just ameliorates the lower level pain. We still need to document, _clearly_ document the precise meaning of each field along with their relationships. XML makes verbosity/size and issue alot sooner than binary formats. It is easy to claim that compressed xml is about the same size as uncompressed xls, but that is not a valid comparison. Compressing the format makes it alot less useful (no random access). It is also a perfomance nightmare. In Gnumeric we've had to give alot of thought to our xml format to minimize the amount of replicated information. This makes it much faster to read, but makes it more opaque.
Even if we can magicly hurdle all of these issue there is still the fundamental point that a file format is dump of an application's state. That state includes your data, and a pinch of the application specific wrapping. Presumably your data can travel to other similar apps (not necessarily true for spreadsheet functions) but the application data is going to depend alot on how _this_ version of this application perceives things. If another app wants to read that data it needs to support a super set of the originating features, and must be able to map (quickly) to the new representation.
So, just tossing some docs into the public domain are probably not going to do much. Heck we've had docs for most of the lotus wk* formats for 2 years, but have never had time to write an importer never minds an exporter. Anyone want to help ?
So just because you work on something for a long time, that makes it right? So if I invest ten years of my life making poison, I should have the right to use them on people to make money?
No matter how many times people say it - investing time or money doesn't mean you're doing the right thing.
I can't image this being true. Maybe some company claims copyright, but how could this possibly hold up in court? Has it been tested? I remember that Mac-Windows case for user interfaces, but Mac lost that one, how could an even less novel thing like a file format be protected?
Maybe if there is some algorithm involved where you can't find a different algorithm (aka GIF), but if you made a GIF file with bzip2 compression wouldn't that be ok? Like you could write a JVM compatible program, that say also ran with something you called Chai, which didn't use the name Java except to say, "Hey we can read Java(TM) files." wouldn't that be ok?
I'm interested in graphic manipulation and such in Linux, and I'm just curious what you use? GIMP? Or something else?
Unfortunately recent versions of Office use a version of .RTF so tweaked that it is totally unparsable by older non-MS programs.
It also seems to cut both ways. An RTF file created in AppleWorks is unreadable in Office 97/98/2000/XP/X. Same with RTF files from WordPerfect.
Star Office 6/ OpenOffice 1 format is a great choice for a portable format. XML+Zip compression. If MS adopts it, however, they will embrace, then extend it to the breaking point. Just like they did with RTF.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Do what I've done. Install OpenOffice 1.0 on your corporate machine. Set it to save in Microsoft file formats by default (I know, but bear with me). Use it to create, read and write Microsoft Office files for a couple of months. Invite your coworkers to use it. See if they even notice that it's not Microsoft Office. Document everything you do with it.
When you have a big healthy list of Microsoft format files that you've touched with it, confront your IS department and demand to know why they are wasting money on Microsoft Office. Tell them that you've already removed it from your machine (that's a $300 saving to the company right there) with - demonstrably - no effect on your or anyone else's productivity. CC people in accounting or cost control. Invite them to try it, to inspect the files (using Microsoft Office, naturally) and to ask your coworkers what they think of it. Request a specific answer about why it can't be used across the enterprise, or at least trialled on a larger scale, in parallel with the existing Microsoft Office if need be. If they bitch that it's unsupported, suggest that they pay for StarOffice. If they whine that it's not guaranteed to create usable Microsoft binary format files, point out that it is creating them, and that Microsoft Office doesn't guarantee it either!
That's step 1, and it's a big step: get your company using Star/OpenOffice. Don't even bring up the issue of file formats until you've achieved this (I made that mistake). This might take years. It might never happen, because your IS guys are idiots or cowards working on the "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM/Microsoft" principle. But try for it.
Once you've got everyone using Star/OpenOffice then you can launch stage two. Switch to creating documents in the default XML format. Any Microsoft binary format documents that you touch as part of your normal work should be saved as XML. Make a nice big list of all the documents that you've changed, because (this is the good bit) nobody else should even notice. Then after a few months, back you go to IS with your list, and demand to know why everyone else is still using Microsoft binary formats as the default. At this point there simply no reason to stick with them. Point out that a default Star/OpenOffice document (zipped XML) is significantly smaller than the Microsoft binary equivelant, which should keep the beancounters happy. And that should they ever go back to a proprietary suite (gods forbid) that it's far easier to convert from XML to anything than from Microsoft binaries to anything.
It will be a long and painful process, but OpenOffice 1.0 and StarOffice 6.0 have made it possible to start it now. If you haven't tried these products, do so now. It's your first step into a larger universe. ;-)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Amazon.com: Steal this idea, Michael Perelman
Yes, I linked to everybody's favorite patent abuser; I guess it because I like irony or something like that. I strongly recommend anyone even remotely interested in this stuff to read this book.
When should standards be placed in the public domain? When a company/organization deems that their format need be standardized.
In order to have a standard in the public domain, you first have to have documentation in the public domain detailing said standard. Preparing such documentation is expensive, and in the case of Word format, would impede the future of development of the product.
Why is that? Because once you create a standard, you have to comply with it. The Word file format is not intended to be a standard. It is a document that holds all information as edited/embedded into Microsoft Word (R). Sure, it is possible to write other programs that can read it, but that doesn't mean that Microsoft has to make it easy for competitors to do so.
That being said, people have done so, and nothing is preventing you from legally reverse engineering Microsoft file formats and publishing your own documentation on the format. Patents and DMCA laws may prevent you from doing certain things with the formats, but absolutely nothing prevents you from figuring it out yourself.
Many companies intending people to implement and use their file formats as a standard publish documentation for such formats. Microsoft publishes the RTF (Rich Text Format) format in the MSDN. Adobe publishes the PDF (Portable Document Format) in a PDF/book that you can acquire from their support web site.
Although it would be nice if there was an uber file format, people disagree on what is important and what is not important in such a format. For now, XML tends to be the that format. For the little help the tags might give you in the ability to reverse engineer XML, the format is still wildly inefficient compared to binary.
I have no sympathy for people on Slashdot who continually whine about MS. Do or do not. There is no try, and no excuse.
Of course, I'll have to find a way to read it for free ...
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
And once you get a foot caught in that treadmill, you're forever waving your data gioidbye unless you churn it ALL with every revision.
I know I've permanently lost lots of IP this way. Stuff I'lll have to reinvent because the article I wrote is in a file format that is no longuer supported.
That's why I stopped upgrading my OS & word processor on at least one machine. I can't afford to eat the cost of recreating the old stuff.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Didn't work as a defence for DeCSS.
I addressed that issue.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Seems to be slashdotted... Mirrors/cached copies anyone?
Try the library. You'd be surprised at what they have. Sometimes, you suggest a book to add to their collection, and they cooperate.
Where does Pantone fit into all this? Just about The Only Way to keep your logo colors constant from your stationery to your polo shirts to your carpeting to the sides of your trucks is to specify the Pantone numbers.
Very useful, very accurate, and very hard to do with the GIMP, since Pantone makes their money by collecting royalites on the use and integration of their codes into color-sensitive products and processes.
Personally, my opinion on the length of IP is more along the lines of patents. Patents are visibly for a defined, finite amount of time. Anything which is not capable of expiring in the lifetime of the author is not a "limited time" as provided in the Constitution. Patents are clearly shorter than copyrights, and which provides more contribution to the useful arts and sciences? There is no reason for a novel to last longer than a patent on file formats, and conversely, there's no reason for a patent to last longer than it does, or even as long as it does. Ten to fourteen years even seems ridiculous in this day and age. By the time a computer patent or copyright ends, of what scientific or artful value will it be? I know I'm certainly looking forward to installing that legal, public domain copy of MS-DOS version 1 when it finally loses copyright protection a thousand years from now...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
They are called tyres.
What other impacts if any, does this place on the future of gpl code?
Have you actually used that spec and example code to create real, usable RTF?
I'm trying at the moment, and some things (page numbers in footers, particularly) are simply not documented in the RTF documentation or sample code.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
If somebody creates a good file format and they don't want to make it public domain, they shouldn't have to. Feel free to make a competing format and release it to public domain. We live in a competitive world.
That's exactly this story and why no company should do this. Had they not released it, the competition would not have had a chance to become more successful than themselves. You've just dismissed the entire reason why companies do this. I suspect this is because you don't agree and/or have never been in this position.
The solution is quite simple;
:P On the flip side, if you have ever thought to yourself that downloading and compiling source was a great way to do all software installations that is highly convenient, then you have been brainwashed.
Don't shoot anybody over file format rights;
and;
companies shouldn't be such dickheads about sucking every last dollar from their customers and should actually aim for customer SATISFACTION and not customer BRAINWASHING, which are two COMPLETELY different things.
Hint: If you have ever setup a DOS network and thought to yourself how nice and easy it was and how well suited for the task DOS is, then you have been brainwashed.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
If your file format is used by more than 50% of all users (or files, or companies, ...), you must make it public.
There is no proactive enforcement, but one can sue to make sure it happens. (just like in case of antitrust in the US)
I call it The Monopoly Trigger. Applies to many other things as well.
Note that "Use governmental force to take control of the format away from its owner." is not among the list of choices available to individuals who respect the rights of others.
- System Enhancements Associates (SEA) was a 2-person company - Thom Henderson and his wife.
- SEA's version of ARC was, in fact, a copy of the LZW compression routines used in the standard UNIX 'compress' command.
- ARC was released with full source code.
- There were several clones of ARC (based on the source code), not just PKARC. SEA did not appear to mind this.
- Phil Katz created PKARC, which was ARC with compression and decompression routines written in assembler. SEA contacted him to try and buy his assembler routines for the official ARC, but he refused.
- SEA sued PKWARE for copyright and trademark infringement when Phil Katz took out adverts in computer magazines making disparaging remarks about ARC. Because PKARC was basically a copy of ARC (from the same source), SEA had it in the bag.
More details here.Nice to see you drop by, Ayn. Now stop trotting out this tired old bullshit. Seriously: what you might expect is that you would be rewarded for your efforts, and in a capitalist society that works by providing some incentive for investment to occur in your business. This is what temporary intellectual monopolies (copyrights and patents; the term "intellectual property" is misleading, and you should avoid using it) were supposed to make happen.
The idea of you having control, and your cold dead fingers around your idea as the gub'mint is dragging it away from you, is dishonest propaganda by those in power who want to keep it. You don't need control per se to innovate; it has almost nothing directly to do with the economics of the situation.
Why? It's my forking data! I wrote this paper, not Microsoft/Sun/whoever. This is my image, not Adobe's, Microsoft's, Quark's, or whoever. It's my intellectual property. I do not want to be bound to one company to access MY OWN STUFF. Imagine if to open the door to your own house, you needed a key from a company that went out of business. If you ever break the key, if the company isn't selling that key anymore, tough. You can't get into your house. (And calling a locksmith to "reverse engineer" the lock is violating the builder's intellectual property on their lock design.)
So should there be a time limit on propretary file formats? Yes. The day the program is released, I want full documentation of the format available for free and an agreement that I can't be sued for using the documentation. It's my data, not the company's and I do not want to be locked to that one company for MY data. If I choose to edit the file with a commercial, closed source program, that is my choice. If I choose to edit the file with a Free Software program, so be it. I should never, ever be beholden to a 3rd party for my own intellectual property.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
How about this: Consider a number of "transition stages" from completely closed to completely (LGPL or AL -like) free software.
1. Keep source and binaries to yourself and try make buck (hell, even use DMCA to keep competitors from your back).
2. Ship binaries and API to have give seconds parties and competitors access. Or have "strategic partners" look into your code and allow others to reverse-engineer your stuff.
3. Just release sources under whatever public license...
Obviously it is hard to go from stage 3 back to 1, so naturally stages work the other direction.
Now when should you enter which stage? First, anyone should feel free to enter stage 3. This works well in case you are selling a SERVICE rather than a piece of SOFTWARE. Eg. users of an Office-type package generally don't want to change your software, rather use it, get support and maybe extend it (in which case the full API and sources are available).
This does not work in case of a library that contains an algorithm your worked on for a decade. End users don't mind about its service and fellow coders will just use it. That way you won't make a buck. So to sell your software you will need stage 1. This is the only way, since software (algorithm) patents simply don't work.
Now I'd suggest any coder should be able to make a buck, a descent amount of money, that is. No like M$, still charging hundreds for each copy of excel source even though millions have been sold and COSTS OF RESEARCH HAVE BEEN COVERERED a hundred times.
So informally speaking, you would want be be able to FORCE a company to enter a new stage after so-and-so many months/years have past since software has been released. Or after so-and-so many licenses have been sold. Or after support for the product/version has ceased or the company went bankrupt. Or whatever other criteria.
Main idea: Any coder should WANT to open up any source code, sooner or later. (Some companies - like Microsoft - may not yet understand this is what they want...) Therefore, any rules that enforce hard deadlines should leave a lot of space for volantary actions. But isn't it rediculous that companies are still trying to make a buck out of 20 year old software, even though they give absolutely no support on it?
How do you represent the end-of-line character in ASCII? Expand your answer to consider open standards of arbitrarily high complexity.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
goodness gracious... you go try and write an IETF document complete with UML... blech! its horrible. Use the best tools that are most widely adopted. PDF, PowerPoint, Word.DOC. Just because you're a cheap-ass doesn't mean everybody else has to stoop to the lowest common denominator. I'm not saying throw your money to M$, but rather, find a suitable alternative that can carry over to that format (maybe Corel-Office, Star-Office). their support is increasing day by day, and with more adoption/users they might find the economic incentive to perfect the compatibility.
"By now, he/she has surely developed something newer/fresher, because it's no longer possible to make a profit from the 5 year old software."
Uhm... what industry do you live in?
Haven't you ever actually looked at Oracle?
They are still (arguably) making money off of 10+ year old software.
However I don't imagine Oracle can survive much longer with the extreme costs of their software.
Even though I believe many corporations still believe in paying huge sums of money for something they can get for free, simply to have someone to blame if it goes wrong.
Anyways, I'm rambling...
Absolutely reasonably idea. I think it must be standard (like POSIX) where in government structures may be useful only software products with open file formats and network protocols or/and opensourced.
If I had nothing intelligent to say, I would not use my own name either.
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
This is a tired method of judicial analysis. It basically goes something like this:
1) Assume "society" or government is able to have (individual) rights.
OR
2) Assume an individual has "rights" he does not have. (copy"right")
3) Proceed to "weigh" these rights against each other, with the net effect of
(if 1) infringing actual individual rights in favor of fictional "societal" rights, since the "society" must always come before the individual,
OR
(if 2) granting to the individual priviledges under the guise of "right", which he then complains bitterly about when these priviledges are terminated,
OR
(if both 1 & 2) creating a logical no-man's-land in which it is utterly impossible to come to a conclusion since both premises are false.
It's basically a way for tyrrannical governments to get around the dual requirements of civil rights and equal protection.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
If you independantly discover what others kept a trade secret, by patenting it, the holders of the trade secret lose their rights to the invention. That is the risk you play by keeping trade secrets.
JPEG didn't "find" a suitable alternative. They recognized a need, and the risk of incompatable formats, and found a solution to both. Not the best solution in every case (Cameras for example need a larger color space than printers, and for the most part - this is unsupported by JPEG - for which oversight the JPEG authors should be sterilized - but anyway, it is a highly workable format in the public domain - not by accident.
PDF is a horrible format (Try sometime to get columular data out)
Last Point. If the government placed a strong emphasis on the need where practical for open standards - open standards would be commonplace.
AIK
But try telling that to those that would like the Linux Operating System to interoperate with DVDs.
You said the exact thing that Rogerborg, silentbozo, and another AC said. yerricde answered it above.
Inspired by this post I downloaded OpenOffice and installed it on my stock Mandrake 8.2, and watched the install go just fine except it couldn't create any of the symlinks...the permissions were ok, but it seemed as if there was a space in one of the script variables. No problem, I can make my own symlinks.
So I fetched an MS Word document and watched it dump core as it tried to read it.
It's the actual data you're storing that's confidential (sometimes). File formats should be public from their inception, if only to aid in the creation of conversion tools / import filters and whatnot. Of course this isn't what M$ wants, but for the rest of the world it could be very good.
Of course there is some degree of lock-in that pertains to using proprietary file formats, and some companies hold on to that lock-in very dearly, but should they be confronted with the threat of a competitor's product being file-compatible, then the battle comes down to whose app is truly superior, not just who has the largest installed user base.
In RL, if you're using Product X and find a Product Y that does the same thing at a lesser price, you just might switch. Now if they're both the same price, but Product Y smells like citrus while Product X smells like bleach, then you might also switch. The point of it is that you are free to choose whatever product you want to do the job, and you can always switch back if you are so inclined. Software should be no different, Lock-in is evil, lock-in is terrorism, blah!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The DMCA's circumvention ban makes an explicit exemption regarding reverse engineering for purposes of interoperability (17 USC 1201(f) [cornell.edu]).
And it defines interoperability as "the ability of computer programs to exchange information, and of such programs mutually to use the information which has been exchanged".
Which will be interpreted by the lawyers preparing the complaint against you as meaning that there must be a two-way exchange of data with the original program, or you don't get the exemption.
By the way, what does your sig mean?
Sorry for posting the third time to the same post. If there's any book you should spend money on it's this one. You don't like paying for books and I understand it. But if there's any single book you should ignore your feelings and actually pay for, it's this one, because you'd be funding a supporter of your cause. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
well, yah -- we have the right to pursue happiness, success, and love. Nowhere does anything guarantee we will get any of them. Patents just keep someone else from screwing you, they don't promise to make your product sell and make a profit.
Well, considering your obvious dislike and complete disregard for any of the points Ayn Rand tried to make - perhaps any argument I make will fall on deaf ears.
(For what it's worth, no, I never considered her a "personal hero" or someone to idolize. I agreed with quite a few basic points she made, but her writing style bores me. She exaggerates everything to hammer home points that could be much better made if done so more subtly.)
The fact is, the United States moves further and further away from a capitalist society all the time. As we move towards a common denominator of hybrid socialism/capitalism - individuals are expected to freely give up more of their work to the community.
Who do you think these folks are who are "in power", trying to spread the concept of the citizen having control of his/her own ideas? I think the problem is quite the opposite. The people in power find they can best stay there by convincing society that we somehow *need* them and their laws in order to survive. The more governmnet assistance programs and perceived need to "beef up" their anti-crime organizations (look at the FBI since 9-11) they can get us to agree to, the better stance they have to manipulate us for their own gain.
And no, you don't *need* control to innovate. That was never the issue. You *want* control to innovate. Otherwise, you're left with a relative few that innovate because they either A) believe in socialism and the idea that they only exist to serve the greater whole, or B) do so for some sort of personal satisfaction, despite not being rewarded in other ways for their efforts.
There's an important balance that needs to be struck. I completely agree that there's no good that comes from forever letting someone hang onto exclusive rights to an intellectual work. (Let's face it. The old adage that "There's nothing new under the sun." holds some truth. Nobody is just born with knowledge. They're taught by people who came before them.) But that doesn't mean there isn't a greater good in giving people a window of opportunity to profit from new concepts/inventions/publications.
Umm, do YOU work anyplace that uses Oracle?
In case you hadn't noticed, they've been releasing new versions... several in the last 5 years.
Where I last worked, we were in the process of doing a LOT of work to get everything working properly with 9i, as an upgrade from v8.0, which we upgraded to from v7.03/04 not that long before....
Oracle isn't actively selling any of their old versions.... certainly nothing they've developed over 5 years ago. This is true of every software package I can think of. If nothing else, changes in operating systems force developers to release upgrades.