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| Authored by: stegu on Monday, March 18 2013 @ 05:52 AM EDT |
Yes, many people not on Windows can view the video, and on a pragmatic level of
"get this link to work" your attitude makes perfect sense. At a deeper
level, however, you are doing exactly what the vendors of proprietary formats
are hoping for: don't make a fuss when governments publish material in
non-standard, non-open formats that are controlled by a single vendor, just put
up with it and say that it's not a big issue.
This is, in my opinion, the biggest issue we are currently facing in the field
of digital information. Open and standardized formats are fundamental to what we
need to build for the future. If we accept proprietary formats for important
information that is supposed to be accessible to anyone, we miss the big
picture, and in the long run we are giving up a significant part of our freedom
and our open access to information.
As an example, I can read most .docx files just fine using LibreOffice. However,
I still send them back when I get them, and say "This is wrong. Send me a
PDF instead, or if you expect me to work on the document with you, use an open
format, preferably a standardized format like ODF".
Of course, there is a limit to how much fuss I will make, and sometimes I do
exchange information with colleagues using MS Word files as the vehicle, but my
first response is always "please don't do that", and I will keep
fighting this seemingly insignificant but overall very important fight at the
personal level, because if I don't care, how could I expect my employer or my
government to care?
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: cjk fossman on Tuesday, March 19 2013 @ 12:33 AM EDT |
Then I have a problem with it.
I'm not going to claim the system on which I write this is
pristine, but I do not like binary blobs because I do not
trust closed source vendors.
I pay taxes, and I want the government that receives them to
be transparent in the software they force me to use.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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