[notimp]

No.

I will not remove what I have written from the public record - what world are we living in, that something like this is even suggested. Even more from a person with some structural power in this community behind them.

What I will do - is to excuse myself for not having kept the comment exactly in memory and having produced a wrong citation.

There was no malice behind it and no nefarious intent.

The apology also extends especially to jhowell for bringing him in a situation where he felt he had to defend himself, and had to take the time to resurface the original quote.

Now, that this two minute formality is dealt with - lets talk about semantics.

The format is unfit for archival purposes.

Not just "worse than all formats that came before" - unfit.

Why?

- Unscrambling the format still is not an option, valid attempts, potentially unreleased code and structural decisions aside - this community has decided distinctly - not to open up .kfx, or was unable to do so - at least for the time being, touting the structural "let us have all our users move through the Amazon "legacy format soupkitchen" process" instead - as a better solution.

The format is trash. Binable. From the perspective of the customer it has no other properties other than allowing him to get his license agreements worth and be able to look at that thing. Then he/she has the option to delete it. Thats it. Thats the featureset.

And the look at it part is conditional on having a Kindle around, with a registered user account, thats at least somewhat up to date - because as of now, its the only device that allows us to even look at those things.

- Second point. The structural change in rollout, makes it absolutely certain - that the moment anyone releases information on how to unscramble the format - the format will be changed again. Because structurally the only one that has any stakes in creating it is set up to be Amazon alone. And in the new ecosystem they can rollout a "patched" format in hours not days.

Authors have to produce something different, then comes Amazon and produces the book. Readers buy something different, then comes Amazon and auto delivers the file format.

No one but Amazon comes in direct contact with the format itself again, rollout is automated, blogs only mention in a byline - if a new format is released - no one cares. Structurally. Because no one is allowed to have any stakes in the new format anymore.

If any of you is willing to make the case, that such a format, in its current state is "fit for archival purposes" - make the case.

Don't threaten me with powerplays into retracting that statement.

The citation was wrong (in as much that jhowell only stated, that it is a worse format than any other format that came before)), but the fact is correct. [Moderator addition: Note that jhowel never said that KFX is a worse format than any other format that came before. Mod note added following notimp's refusal to edit this post.]

If you can look your constituency in the eye, and are able to tell them, that they don't have to worry about the fact, that their Kindles are filling up with scrambled files, that might never be recoverable (in a sense, that you shouldnt need to have to be registered, and buy a certain reader to even look at them), do so.

Don't play power games around semantics that have no real world equivalent at all.

You had people in here on the last page who had the impression, that .kfx would "just be .html" - even on the functional level ("Those are all .html based file formats, where is the difference -") - how long do you wan't to keep up this notion?

Its wrong.

We all know it - but we are very careful to dress it in words. I haven't found out exactly whose public image we are guarding here - but I'm not sure, that it is in any of our interests.