[Ipg-smz] no mention of formats, was: What happens when Linux keeps getting better and better?

[Gabe Goldberg]

Too true. Recent article on this...

Ensuring Data Storage Longevity

http://destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/Ensuring-Data-Storage-Longevity

On 12/20/2018 11:58 PM, M. Fioretti wrote:
> December 20, 2018 7:44 PM, "Phil Shapiro" <pshapiro at his.com> wrote:
>
>> ... We may have to soon start mining asteroids for new adjectives -- just to describe
>> Linux.
> one thing, no: THE thing that surprised me the most, this being a mailing list of
> professionals mostly writing about technology, is that the ~30 replies arrived so
> far are all for or against this or that operating system or hardware maker...
>
> but so far I have seen no mention of open file formats, i.e. future-proofing one's
> work. Personally, if something has the best hardware and user interface ever, but
> "saves" **MY** work in formats that are not 300% open and fully usable/processable
> with other independent software of the same category, it doesn't exist for me.
> I won't touch it with a flagpole. Regardless of license and price.
>
> Using writing as an example, I may conclude that Microsoft Word has the best user
> interface ever, is 10x times faster than any other text/word processor... but if
> it only saved in .docx format I would NOT use it, period.
>
> Ditto for graphics, CAD, video etc. My work is mine, now and 40 years from now.
> And I'm only talking full access here, not royalties or attribution. It is futile
> to speak of copy-right, when the one who controls your ACTUAL right to copy (=IMPORT)
> your files into another software is some unknown software developer who may have
> stopped working (please note how the license of the software matters VERY little,
> if anything, here) decades before.
>
> If I switched OS today, to any other OS of YOUR choice, MY hard drive would remain
> fully usable because it contains almost 30 years of files, but almost all (*) in
> open, still fully usable formats, including ~20 years of email archive.
> What about you?
>
> Marco
> (*) exceptions: files with math formulas for my thesis from the 80s, and a few
> FrameMaker files I only saved in that format in the early 90s, before I saw the light.
>   
> --
> Home page: http://mfioretti.com
> Blog: http://stop.zona-m.net
>
-- 
Gabriel Goldberg, Computers and Publishing, Inc.       gabe at gabegold.com
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