[notimp]

@geekmaster - thats not enough. And every time I see one of you resorting to the "this is the wrong place for this argument to be held" sentiment - for me it is an expression of we dont wan't to be involved even in thinking about the structural implications (political stuff).

While at the same time, you decide on when to release what you know about the compiler, or if you should propagate the use of formats, programs and interpreters none of you is formally allowed to understand even the tiniest aspect of.

This "do it anywhere, but dont do it in here" attitude is so problematic, because I cant do it on twitter, reddit, the Amazon forums or really anywhere aside the mobile read community - and the argument for why I shouldnt discuss this in front of the independent development and hacking community - suddently has become -

because we in here like to see ourselves as "doers" and not "philosophical thinkers". We dont want to think about the political stuff, we want the notion back, that everything we do in the end just works out somehow. You are self proclaimed "apolitical people".

Yet some of you are still asking questions, trying to wrap their heads around the issue. And every single action (maybe despite your recent premise of "bringing the best screensavers to Kindle users, open source can deliver"), trying to change the functionality of closed systems is inherently political to begin with.

If you want a simple action plan on what to do in a technical sense - reverse the .kfx interpreter on the Kindle down to the very last function Amazon built in. Then create open source tools that allow users to easily convert from and to html based file formats - to be able to obtain the ability to easily transition between ecosystems and be able to understand and produce the most current Kindle file format out there.

Oh, and do it two weeks after the release of every new file format - so using Calibre actually stays a relevant alternative.

The problem is, that you arent able to fulfill this function anymore - so instead you decided to go and work on screensavers and stop thinking about the changes that came with the recent transition.
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To the "words are words" and you can still read them response. .kfx is a binary - right? The concept behind binaries is that you cant read their words anymore. The function of .kfx is that you can "look at words within it" on a "licensed, proprietary eReader, thats logged into an Amazon account". This isnt the function of the DRM layer anymore - it has become a function of the file format.

You just lost ".exe" for "something only Amazon can legally produce and sell, and only they are allowed to conceptually understand, write readers and interpreters for, decide the entirety of the featureset..." - congratulations, and I don't even need an infantile cow-pun to end this sentence with.

Hyphens are grammar - not a patentable feature exclusive - I don't care if the meaning "largely stays the same even without them" - I care about aspects like readability. If the "proprietary file format, you arent able to understand anymore - but that for some of you represents books" for the majority of users offers better readability than the usual "open file format" - you cant point you fingers and proclaim "the market will solve it for us". Pretty obvious, right?

Regarding distribution. Explain to me how .kfx didn't just restrict distribution to the on device store ecosystem owned and operated by Amazon - only - and how this isn't a significant change compared to their prior distribution model of "anyone can produce and sell mobi and or kf8 files - independent of the store ecosystem they plan to use - and if they want to license our DRM they can do that as well". Just shortening the issue to "not everyone should be allowed to distribute book" is manipulative - because there is small difference between "not everyone" (for a certain time frame - discuss this with @apprenticeharper) and "only a single commercial entity". A small difference consisting of at least several ten thousands of people.

Its the difference between keeping the means of production distributed, or making them and a certain grammar feature "proprietary company assents" - even you are happy not to understand anymore. How did you put it?

Your job is to put stuff into a compiler and look at what comes out on the other side of it, right? And you dont care if you understand what the compiler does, where it comes from, which license agreements you have to sign to use it, or if the end product still shows any aspects of a book for that matter.

As long as their Kindles work, people could stil photocopy their screens and OCR the results, right? As long as iPods still work, people could still listen to the music on them and replay it on their pianos?

edit: The actual shorcut that is used at this point is "Amazon still provides a loophole" - but you have no influence over how this works, how attractive it is to use, how long its viable and so on... So if you don't tell people now that Amazon has changed the premise, structural dependency increases - very quickly, because they pulled the switch on "autodelivery" without a way to opt out.

Also - the "they deliver to you the best format for every device" argument follows a technobabble logic - where in order for Kindle to process files faster (which for some reason doesnt translate to any user benefits (the only benefits are the artificially linked ones (hyphenation, ...) - you have to loose every aspect the file format would still have in common with a book. But thats stuff the compiler does - so you arent interested.

Queue the applause...