[Recovered Thread: 53553]

[BruceMcL]

Great comments, people!

Here's a few responses.

- Yes, data corruption is an important issue. But that's another rant, another thread. Let's keep this thread going on file formats.

- I am not talking about legal ownership or copyright. I'm talking about the ability to use your image for what you want. You can legally own a safe and it's contents, but if you don't know the combination and somebody else does, you may have a problem using what's in the safe.

- I admire the ability of third parties to reverse engineer the various RAW formats. I didn't realize there were so many third party utilities out there. I doubt a camera manufacturer would bring legal action against a third party RAW conversion developer, but the possibility may exist.

- I do think that in the long run, having "open format" RAW file formats would benefit the camera industry. To a certain degree, releasing their file specs means that the manufacturer has less of a responsibility to make excellent conversion software for every platform out there. Certainly open file formats would benefit the photography community. I'd like to see an open source camera OS myself, but that's another tangent for another time.

- Note that "The Impermenance of File Formats" was a tip of the cap to a book who's title starts with, "The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs." Maybe some of you have heard of it!

Thanks again for the great comments. The availability and commitment of third party software and developers is very reassuring.