Re: Proprietary Software term

[David Kastrup]

David Wright <address@hidden> 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