FWIW, I think it's a great thing. Good for every honest player in the market.
Good for Amazon, because being able to play another format makes the Kindle more valuable, increasing demand for it. I don't think their book sales will even suffer, as their e-book prices are quite competitive with those of other sources, and the convenience of buying from them is unchanged.
Good for honest readers who bought Secure Mobipocket files because there is now one more e-book player on the market that can read their library.
Good for honest Kindle owners who now have more sources of readable ebooks.
The people that it hurts are people who hoped to cheat honest customers out of being able to read the books they paid for, in the hopes that their victims would pay all over again for the same content. The back of my hand to them; they deserve to suffer.
Though I do see one downside--I was figuring that the pool of Kindles that could only play unsecured mobipocket files would drive demand for non DRMed books like Baen's, and that increasing the availability of nonDRMed books would be good for everyone in the market. Now I'm not as sure that will happen.
But well done Igorsk!
