Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Your logic slightly eludes me. Amazon owns Mobipocket, so in what way does the fact that AZW files are renamed Mobi files (which they are) make them less proprietary?
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It is less proprietary in the sense that Mobi file are not fixed to Amazon. The only thing special about AZW (as far as I can tell) is the DRM not the book content itself. In other words, they really arn't different formats but at the most a variant of the same format (if that can even be said).
Remember that while Amazon might own Mobipocket, there are many sellers out there selling Mobi files just as there were before Amazon purchased them (Smashwords being one example). If Amazon was being monopolistic, they'd probably charge a fee for use of the format; I'm guessing they don't given the free books being offered on other websites.
Anyway, it's just a minor thing that I suppose depends on how you look at it. Heck one could argue EPUB is proprietary to Adobe and on from there... There are probably more proprietary formats than not in the commercial world anyway.