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While it's true that epub is open and mobi is proprietary it's also true that the vast majority of ebooks sold in the USA are in mobi format, not epub. So it might be more accurate to say that epub is a minor open format and mobi is the defacto industry standard.
It is unfortunate that e-ink readers are made by book sellers and cater to them. I'd love to see e-ink readers that can read just about any ebook like my phone can. But that's not the world we live in.
I'm an old timer and I began reading ebooks before they were called ebooks and before anyone sold them. This was even before public access to the internet was available. Ebooks were scanned by anyone who felt like it and exchanged over BBS systems and on Compuserve and AOL, etc. In those days no-one thought about them being illegal and even though those systems took piracy very seriously this wasn't considered piracy. It was just too small.
The format was plain and simple ASCII text files. There was no bold or italicized text. Formatting was very primitive. And no-one cared. We read could carry a bunch of books on a pocket device such as the HP95lx and that was all that mattered.
I read a lot of books in those days and loved it but I'd sure hate to have to go back to it. A lot of the freedom of that time is lost now with devices like the Kindles but the reading is better and the selection is hugely better. And you don't have to scan your own books, which takes a lot of time and work. I'm okay with it like it is.
Barry
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