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He did talk about making "public knowledge accessible in the future". Yes, but the conclusion does not follow from this goal. There's no reason that an open f
by CWuestefeld 15y ago
He did talk about making "public knowledge accessible in the future".
Yes, but the conclusion does not follow from this goal.
There's no reason that an open format will be readable in the future. If I define some document format, build an application that reads/writes it, and publish it to github with GPL licensing, then in all likelihood it will be forgotten completely in a decade. My inability to gain users will ensure that it withers.
On the other hand, even if the .DOC and .XLS files made by Microsoft are proprietary, they've been reverse-engineered and are well-understood; the .DOCX and .XLSX file formats are even documented. Because they're so universally used, out of necessity, someone in the future will be thinking about how to read those old files.
So being open might make it more likely that something obscure will be readable in the future. But I don't think it's nearly so strong a likelihood as what demand from an army of users of proprietary software will lead to.
- Duff 15y agoOpen is just part of the equation. ODF is also an international standard: ISO/IEC 26300:2006 Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 The point is, in the distant future, someone will be able to use the specification for ODF and read a document that complies with the standard. All aspects of the file will be reproducible, including metadata, tables, etc. And as I said, open formats are just one approach. The approach that the US Courts and the State of Washington takes (conversion to PDF/A or TIFF) is a valid approach too.
- tzs 15y agoIf all they have is the document and the ODF specification, they are out of luck. They'll need the OpenOffice or LibreOffice source code, as that is the real specification.
- rbanffy 15y agoAt least someone will be able to store the full specification of the format, or a reference implemetation, along the file that is going to be preserved. It's nothing more, in fact, than one document that refers to another in that the only way to get all the information is to decode both. You can't store the full spec of a format that's not fully documentes nor keep a runnable reference implementation that has only a binary executable (unless you also preserve the computer it runs on). But then you have turtles all the way down.