Freedom of data, not necessarily software
Guys, stay on the ball. This topic is about freedom of your data, irrespective of applications used to create them. Don’t sidetrack now, because it is easy to jump from freedom of data to open-sourcing software with regards to this issue.
Obviously, software companies are going to be protective about their apps and their source. Fine. Most users don’t care about your black boxes. But, they will be mighty pissed if software is going to lock them down to use a particular version that has no portability to (any) other application.
The moment people begin thinking on the lines of data preservation, they will suddenly realize the lack of easy portability without degradation of quality of their content. This is a major, major pain in the ass. And this is — or ought to be — the topic of discussion.
Perhaps you find it particularly galling that I’m more or less saying that the reason they’re not going to do what Bray suggests - despite the fact that following Bray’s suggestion really would be cool for users and developers in all sorts of ways - is that it might cost them upgrade sales from users who have already paid for previous versions of Mac OS X. Such gall is one factor that drives people to open source platforms.
But there’s a flip side to this equation, which is that developing good software takes time and talent, and time and talent cost money. Some portion of the revenue from sales of Mac OS X goes back into funding development of future versions of Mac OS X.
Anil Dash came up with a phrase: intellectual dishonesty for smart guys deliberately misguiding people/sidetracking the real issues. John Gruber, I think, is doing just that. Jumping from freedom of data to writing in defense of software makers by citing their need for the revenue in order to put it back into their R&D cycle.
Nobody has a thing against paid software, but paid need not mean data locked-down. I mean come-on, look at the irony. You are paying for the software and yet, it does not give your data the freedom to port to another open format, if you wish to. That is like robbing and cheating. It may have worked until now, but will not in future, or atleast, should not.