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Difference between revisions of "Campaign for Document Freedom"
Campaign for Document Freedom (view source)
Revision as of 19:01, 25 April 2008
, 19:01, 25 April 2008Aaron Siego explains the need of document freedom
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"Previous proprietary document formats have become difficult or impossible to read within little more than a decade. There is no reason to believe this trend will not continue if allowed so to do. Without open standards for our documents we are likely to inflict a 'digital dark-age' on our descendants when they discover that they are unable to read any of the sources for their history, such as Government records, acts of Parliament, property title deeds, scientific research papers, and family histories. They will not forgive us if we fail to | "Previous proprietary document formats have become difficult or impossible to read within little more than a decade. There is no reason to believe this trend will not continue if allowed so to do. Without open standards for our documents we are likely to inflict a 'digital dark-age' on our descendants when they discover that they are unable to read any of the sources for their history, such as Government records, acts of Parliament, property title deeds, scientific research papers, and family histories. They will not forgive us if we fail to | ||
act to protect them now, but instead allow another generation of poorly specified proprietary standards to become widely adopted." - from [http://www.ukuug.org/ooxml/ UKUUG press release] | act to protect them now, but instead allow another generation of poorly specified proprietary standards to become widely adopted." - from [http://www.ukuug.org/ooxml/ UKUUG press release] | ||
"In the case of document format storage, a standard is truly important because formats (poor or not) that eventually lose implementations over time carve out blank spaces in our history once we can't read them properly. These same formats are also the source of certain information inequalities in society (e.g. those who can't obtain an implementation for financial, social or political reasons). This may not matter so much for Acme Inc's quarterly reports but it sure does for government, health and other socially vital information. Remember when some hurricane Katrina victims couldn't use the FEMA website because they had slightly older computers? This isn't a made up boogyman, this is stuff that bites us as a society fairly regularly. Now imagine a hundred years from now when we can still read the constitutions of our countries, research papers, poetry and other examples of human kind's great literary works that are hundreds or even thousands of years old ... but can't read the documents we're creating at the start of the 21st century. How will we learn from our history if we can't study it fully? | |||
Getting proprietary formats out of the way as soon as possible so that we do not extend this mess any further than necessary is absolutely the responsible thing to do in light of our (hopeful) future." - [http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=293507&cid=20548069 Aaron Siego] | |||
'''Document Freedom and Democracy''' | '''Document Freedom and Democracy''' | ||
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===International=== | ===International=== | ||
* [http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=293507&cid=20548069 Aaron Siego's reply to Miguel] | |||
* [http://topicmaps.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/the-norway-vote-what-really-happened/ The Norway Vote - What really happened] | * [http://topicmaps.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/the-norway-vote-what-really-happened/ The Norway Vote - What really happened] | ||
* [http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/04/sinclairs-syndrome.html Sinclair's Syndrome] - "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." | * [http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/04/sinclairs-syndrome.html Sinclair's Syndrome] - "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." | ||