On 8/23/2018 4:21 PM, David Wright wrote:
On Sat 18 Aug 2018 at 22:18:51 (+0200), David Kastrup wrote:
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.
Urs mentions encryption being used by CodaMusic (I've never heard
of them) and that clearly shows an intention of lock-in. OTOH Wols
doesn't lay out here the evidence of the reported intent of Word's
changes. (Actually, I thought it was an open format nowadays.)
Coda Music was the original company re: Finale, way back in the day
before it was sold and became MakeMusic eventually.
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