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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"."
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.
File interchange becomes much simpler if you stop worrying about codecs, and concentrate on supporting formats - Linux tools for video could read & write the AVI format (just interleaved RIFF chunks) but either use a free codec, or none at all, without creating yet another video file standard.
MS Word is a different problem - although RTF is the preferred interchange format anyway. Certainly my partner (who occasionally works as a freelance proof-reader) uses RTF extensively with her clients instead of Word native format. The RTF v1.6 spec. is available in the MSDN, and includes sample reader & writer source code.
Jon.
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
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.
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The idea here is that we do not want to dictate the software used, but we want to ensure that whatever software is used, OTHER software is free to interoperate with it, including open source software. By levelling the playing field through open file formats, open source software would actually be able to compete without all the belly aching you hear about "not being able to read and write Office formats" and the such.
Bravo. Your summary of my implied position was excellent.
And I will add one more thought:
By requiring open file formats, our government would be much less likely to find itself with files that are unreadable in ten years.
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?