DOSC TWiki snapshot as of mid-2005
Open File Formats (OFF) are not only good for competition and prevention of monopolistic companies. Thinking ahead about our future, "secret" or proprietray file formats? have even now proved the difficulty of trying to decipher someone else's code.
With OFF, the description of the format is freely availalbe for everyone to see and use. Not only can improvements be suggested, but by using open formats? one can feel secure that people a hundred or two hundred years down the line will probably have a way to read our old word processing? files and bad college essays?. (more to come)