Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Not at all. It's something that "normal" people who buy books from Amazon and read them on their Amazon device or app are completely unaware of. Are you suggesting that it's somehow wrong of Amazon to introduce more capable file formats as time goes on?
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Yes I am. Exactly. Improving functionality of course is great. But proprietary data formats are almost always a bad thing, especially when the artifacts in question (ebooks) are designed to be a way to share knowledge with others. To quote somebody who thought about this a lot: "Information wants to be free." That doesn't mean that companies like Azon cannot develop their own features, DRM their books, and make a profit from all the value-add things they do. Open source software developers do variations of this all the time. But it means they should stay aligned with the world community and use open file formats, enabling interoperability and driving greater innovation. I am 100% against what they do with their proprietary data formats, even though I love the functionality of their ereaders, and their vast library of ebooks.