Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
Indeed. There are often legitimate competitive reasons for proprietary formats (There was in Amazon's case, which is one of several reasons I find the subject of this study to be a non-issue).
It's also worth noting, as long as it came up, that 'proprietary' does not automatically mean locked, exclusionary or horribly restrictive.
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Nor does open, documented, non-proprietary mean frozen in place.
Also, proprietary only provides the ability to rapidly prototype extensions to the owner. Everyone else is locked out unless specifically allowed by the owner.
Although the result is not standard, nothing prevents an open standard from being extended or changed. And, if it is useful successful, nothing prevents it from being added to the standard.