4 ms·

And what's the difference compared to forcing docx/xlsx or psd? The network effects affect every exchange, not just archives.

klez 5y ago
docx/xslx are open formats. About psd, yes, that's proprietary. What government agency mandates its use for the public to interact with them? (genuinely asking, not being snarky)
- vetinari 5y ago
  > docx/xslx are open formats. In theory, yes. In practice, you will see files in transitional schema in the wild and you need MS Office to work with them, unless they are not just a very basic document. (I had a similar case in the past, the document contained forms, and it would not render properly even with MS Office for Mac available at the time). > About psd, yes, that's proprietary. What government agency mandates its use for the public to interact with them? (genuinely asking, not being snarky) Not aware of G2C, but in other scenarios, it happens. In our country, public administration is not allowed to use rar either. Only zip, tar, gz, and tar.gz. Despite that, I did receive a rar once; also an Outlook .msg file. Rar was not really a problem, and .msg was solved by communicating with the other side (Mac Outlook cannot open them).
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
If a government forces it's people to use particular software, it has a duty to provide that software to the entire population. If a parliament decides to pay $X billion to Microsoft, for a lisence for all of UK, well, that sucks, but they can fight over it like they do with all other random spending they do. If it's not willing to pay the cost, it is basically creating a monopoly for that firm, and I have to pay for it. The potential for lobbying and corruption is off the scale here.
- vetinari 5y ago
  I see where you come from, and in principle agree with you, but it is not how the real world works. For an extreme example, see South Korea and their ActiveX problem.

klez 5y ago

docx/xslx are open formats. About psd, yes, that's proprietary. What government agency mandates its use for the public to interact with them? (genuinely asking, not being snarky)

vetinari 5y ago
> docx/xslx are open formats. In theory, yes. In practice, you will see files in transitional schema in the wild and you need MS Office to work with them, unless they are not just a very basic document. (I had a similar case in the past, the document contained forms, and it would not render properly even with MS Office for Mac available at the time). > About psd, yes, that's proprietary. What government agency mandates its use for the public to interact with them? (genuinely asking, not being snarky) Not aware of G2C, but in other scenarios, it happens. In our country, public administration is not allowed to use rar either. Only zip, tar, gz, and tar.gz. Despite that, I did receive a rar once; also an Outlook .msg file. Rar was not really a problem, and .msg was solved by communicating with the other side (Mac Outlook cannot open them).

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

If a government forces it's people to use particular software, it has a duty to provide that software to the entire population. If a parliament decides to pay $X billion to Microsoft, for a lisence for all of UK, well, that sucks, but they can fight over it like they do with all other random spending they do. If it's not willing to pay the cost, it is basically creating a monopoly for that firm, and I have to pay for it. The potential for lobbying and corruption is off the scale here.

vetinari 5y ago
I see where you come from, and in principle agree with you, but it is not how the real world works. For an extreme example, see South Korea and their ActiveX problem.