Re: Proprietary format "lock in"

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 4582

Posted by talazem
2005-11-11 15:22:04

Steve Cohen said:
On a related topic, as GrandView diehards know, as new Windows versions appear, it becomes increasing difficult to use older programs.
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This is one of my points: when dealing with long term knowledge storage and management, wouldn’t it be better to use open standards such as XML, to ensure that - say - 30 years from now i can access the information just as i can open up a 300 year old book today and read from it?

If nothing else, if something like XML is used, a future programmer can just write a small code for importing the information into a new program. If i am not mistaken in my understanding of xml and open standards, the whole point is that the file’s organization is transparent; as such, anyone who would like to write a program/macro/etc that would allow for the information exported/saved from one program to be read in another could easily do so, thus preserving the content and the metadata.

Especially when dealing with KM related topics, shouldn’t we be actively encouraging all developers to get on the open standards train? InfoHandler, Grandview, etc. might not be here in 10 years, but i sure do want to personally be able to bring up all my writings and notes, and want my kids and their kids to be able to access my own personal information (like families cherish their ancestors’ diaries and letters)...all of this, besides the need for society and civilization as a whole to be able to access past electronic information, since increasingly much of what we know as mankind is stored in such mediums.

Check out the following article, which gives a concrete case of this already having happened in recent digital history: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=3902&Cr=unesco&Cr1=

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