An image extension can be one of many formats (png, jpg, gif etc). The format is important here because the application that will open it (the image viewer for

An image extension can be one of many formats (png, jpg, gif etc). The format is important here because the application that will open it (the image viewer for example) needs to be able to understand it[1]. The README is a simple plain text file. It has no requirements. Just open it with your text editor. Adding a .txt extension would not be an earth-collapsing-into-a-black-hole kind of thing but there is a problem with it. You are only doing it so that an application can open it more easily. So, here we have a suggestion to change all README files so that an application can open them instead of changing an application so that it can open all README files. Not a good idea! [1]: Actually I lied, the file extension is not that important; it only gives a hint of the format and reading the file will reveal it's format. However, you might want to open different image formats with different image processing applications.