scarcity of digital preservation efforts - was Re: eBay... Yikes!

In article <CANij+deo3in6w9hWaXWUxSk=G9K5y3kLGcXcqQUYJTOmR5zVaw at mail.gmail.com>, William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> writes: I think what he means is that open source file formats tend to be less opaque than others because you have the data definition and the associated behavior as open source code. These days I hear people worrying about vendor lockin with their data formats and choosing open source interchange or data formats for the very reason that it keeps their intellectual property investment free of any vendor. Its still not a majority of people talking about those issues, but more people talk about it now than before. I know that people who work on 3D model content think about this quite a bit when they make their living as a content provider. If their content is locked up in a binary format specific to one tool vendor, then they can't readily switch tools or have confidence that their IP investment is accessible should the tool become unavailable. Sometimes this can simply be that their license expired and they don't want to renew it just to access their data. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>