Proprietary format

A proprietary format is a file format where the mode of presentation of its data is the intellectual property of an individual or organization which asserts ownership over the format. In contrast, a free format is a format that is either not recognized as intellectual property, or has had all claimants to its intellectual property release claims of ownership. Proprietary formats can be either open if they are published, or closed, if they are considered trade secrets. In contrast, a free format is never closed.

Proprietary formats are typically controlled by a private person or organization for the benefit of its applications, protected with patents or as trade secrets, and intended to give the license holder exclusive control of the technology to the (current or future) exclusion of others.^[1] Typically such restrictions attempt to prevent reverse engineering, though reverse engineering of file formats for the purposes of interoperability is generally believed to be legal by those who practice it. Legal positions differ according to each country's laws related to, among other things, software patents.

Privacy, ownership, risk and freedom

One of the contentious issues surrounding the use of proprietary formats is that of ownership of created content.^{[citation needed]} If the information is stored in a way which the user's software provider tries to keep secret, the user may own the information by virtue of having created it, but they have no way to retrieve it except by using a version of the original software which produced the file. Without a standard file format or reverse engineered converters, users cannot share data with people using competing software. The fact that the user depends on a particular brand of software to retrieve the information stored in a proprietary format files increases barriers of entry for competing software and may contribute to vendor lock-in concept.

The issue of risk comes about because proprietary formats are less likely to be publicly documented and therefore less future proof.^[2] If the software firm owning right to that format stops making software which can read it then those who had used the format in the past may lose all information in those files. This is particularly common with formats that were not widely adopted. However, even ubiquitous formats such as Microsoft Word can not be fully reverse-engineered.^{[citation needed]}

Prominent proprietary formats

Open Proprietary Formats

• MP3 — An open standard, but subject to patents in some countries ^[3]
• AAC — An open standard, but owned by Via Licensing ^[4]
• GEDCOM — An open specification for genealogy data exchange, owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Closed Proprietary Formats

• Windows Media Audio - A closed format, owned by Microsoft^[5]
• DWG — (non-documented) AutoCAD Drawing
• PSD — (non-documented) Adobe Photoshop's native image format
• CDR — (non-documented) CorelDraw's native format primarily used for vector graphic drawings
• RAR — (partially documented) archive and compression file format owned by Alexander L. Roshal^[6]

Controversial

• DOC — Microsoft Word Document (formerly closed/undocumented, now Microsoft Open Specification Promise)
• XLS — Microsoft Excel spreadsheet file format (formerly closed/undocumented, now Microsoft Open Specification Promise)
• PPT — Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation file format (formerly closed/undocumented, now Microsoft Open Specification Promise)
• SWF — Adobe Flash format (formerly closed/undocumented, now partially or completely open)
• Rich Text Format — a formatted text format (proprietary^{[7][8][9][10]}, published specification, defined and maintained only by Microsoft)
• XFA — Adobe XML Forms Architecture, used in PDF files (published specification, but not included in the PDF ISO 32000-1 standard; controlled and maintained only by Adobe^[11][12])
• ZIP — a base version of this data compression and archive file format is in the public domain, but newer versions have some patented features^[13][14][15]

Formerly proprietary

• GIF — CompuServe's Graphics Interchange Format (open since 2004)
• PDF — Adobe's Portable Document Format (open since 2008), but the specification allows some proprietary extensions

See also

• Open format

References

1. ^ "Mirriam-Webster's Online Dictionary". http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proprietary. Retrieved 2008-07-11. 
2. ^ ""Sustainability" Digital Preservation". http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/sustain/sustain.shtml#disclosure. Retrieved 2008-07-08. 
3. ^ "Ubuntu's commitment to only include completely free software by default means that proprietary media formats are not configured 'out of the box'...including DVD, MP3, Quicktime, Windows Media, and more." https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats. See also http://www.openformats.org/en5
4. ^ [1].
5. ^ [2].
6. ^ The RAR Archiver EULA (End user license agreement) is embedded in installation files - [3] - Quotation: "Neither RAR binary code, WinRAR binary code, UnRAR source or UnRAR binary code may be used or reverse engineered to re-create the RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary, without written permission of the author."
7. ^ "tutorial: Rich Text Format (RTF)". Colorado State University. http://accessproject.colostate.edu/udl/modules/word/tut_rtf.cfm. Retrieved 2010-03-13. 
8. ^ "4.3 Non-HTML file formats". e-Government Unit. 2002-05. http://archive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/e-government/resources/handbook/html/4-3.asp. Retrieved 2010-03-13. ^{[dead link]}
9. ^ Novell (2004-11-12) (PDF), Novell Files WordPerfect Antitrust Lawsuit against Microsoft, http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2004/11/complaint.pdf, retrieved 2010-03-13 
10. ^ "The Novell Antitrust Complaint (as text) & A Law About Antitrust and Standards Writing". 2004-11-17. http://gl.scofacts.org/gl-20041115214025458.html. Retrieved 2010-03-13. 
11. ^ "Gnu PDF - PDF Knowledge - Forms Data Format". http://gnupdf.org/Forms_Data_Format. Retrieved 2010-02-19. ""Apparently Adobe introduced something newer called XFA (XML Forms Architecture) which doesn't seem standardized."" 
12. ^ A Quick Introduction to Acrobat Forms Technology, 2006-05-14, http://www.appligent.com/files/faq-whatisthedifferencebetweenacroformaxfa/Acroforms%2BWhitePaper.pdf, retrieved 2010-02-19, ""Adobe's XFA Forms is a closed standard that competes with the fully open W3C Xforms standard."" 
13. ^ ".ZIP Application Note". http://www.pkware.com/support/zip-app-note. Retrieved 2010-12-24. 
14. ^ "Latest OOX-ODF FUD-Spat: States Prepare to Ban Zip and PDF Files". http://orcmid.com/blog/2007/02/latest-oox-odf-fud-spat-states-prepare.asp. Retrieved 2010-12-24. 
15. ^ "PKZip Must Open Up". http://brianlivingston.com/eweek/article2/0,4149,1257562,00.html. Retrieved 2010-12-24.