OpenRAW

Please pardon my ignorance if this has been covered somewhere and I just didn't notice it.

I was wondering if there's anything in the works as far as software for converting existing RAW images into an open format? An open format right from the camera would obviously be great, but it does nothing to solve the problem of aging RAW files that may lose support in the future.

I don't know what kind of technical problems exist for this kind of software, but it seems to me that it could be made as a batch processing plugin for UFRaw. Add in the ability to do lossless compression and you'd have something that's quite practical for backup purposes.

While I'm dreaming, let's throw in the ability to create a portable RAW file, something that's reduced in detail to get the file down to under 2mb that could be more easily distributed over the web.