David Wright <lily...@lionunicorn.co.uk> writes: > On Sat 18 Aug 2018 at 19:55:01 (+0100), Wols Lists wrote: >> On 18/08/18 12:51, David Kastrup wrote: >> >> Indeed, that wasn't expressed too well. What I meant is that >> >> > CodaMusic's policy to use binary non-released (for some time even >> >> > encrypted) file formats strongly discouraged anyone to make a program >> >> > use these files. >> >> > That's more than just lock-in. Don't know a good expression, but that's >> > more like locked-away (don't know a good expression for it) since the >> > format is designed to keep the user from being able to access his own >> > information (and/or that of others). In my book, that's a no-no since >> > it renders archiving worthless. >> > >> Undocumented proprietary format. >> >> I compare WordPerfect with Word ... Word's format seems to change with >> almost every release, the changes being in many cases apparently to >> interfere with compatibility with other programs. >> >> While WordPerfect's format, although proprietary, was well-documented, >> with defined extensibility, and a guarantee of compatibility. To the >> extent that WordPerfect 6, released in 1994, is to the best of my >> knowledge capable of editing and saving - WITHOUT DAMAGING IT - a file >> created by the latest version. So any WordPerfect-compatible program >> should be able to do the same. > > "Undocumented proprietary format" doesn't express the intent which > "lock-in" does. As David pointed out, patents can be used to protect > a proprietary format, only I don't think that, for example, the exFAT > filesystem is, in his words, a "strange case".
A filesystem is not a file format. -- David Kastrup _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
