A lack of standardisation in some areas...
A lack of standardisation in some areas of technology acts purely to annoy consumers, raise the barrier to entry for inovators, and waste a load of time and money for everyone.
It seems that the lack of a standardised RAW format falls clearly into this space.
I assume that current RAW formats are driven by hardware representations within on-camera image processing pipelines, and some significant investment will be needed to change this. But at some point it must happen, and if not now then when.
(Maybe in 5 years time, when the costs of implementing the changes will be higher as the hardware becomes even more sophisticated).
Go on manufacturers, foster creativity, strengthen the market and spend less on boring fundementals. Sounds like a good deal to me.
WGM.
Current raw file formats are simply driven by fairly...
Current raw file formats are simply driven by fairly arbitrary historical choices. In fact, many of them are based on an ISO standard.
The problem is that the ISO standard isn't up to date, permits too much variation, and omitted some important features. Had there been a better standard at the time when the camera firmware was being developed, and had the camera manufacturers chosen to use it, the development cost would have been about the same. (Or less, if they had chosen not to develop their own raw conversion software).
Now they face two costs of using a different format in future cameras: the first cost is that they would be able to re-use less of their existing firmware and experience in the new version; and the second is that they would need extra changes to their raw conversion software provided for the camera.
So there would be some extra cost for the first camera they used the new format for. But compared with all the other costs of developing a new camera and firmware, this would probably be a small cost. (The single most important part of a raw file, the sensor-values, would look the same in the common format).
I think the fact that Leica, Ricoh, and Samsung, none of whom appear to make as much money from their digital cameras as Nikon and Canon, could use a common format (DNG), suggests that the cost can't be unacceptably high. (Hasselblad-Imacon charge so much for their cameras & digital backs that they they may have found the cost of using this format relatively less. But they did have to change their raw conversion product to support this format).
I believe the single most important reason the big manufacturers don't do it is that they don't see the need to. That is where OpenRAW can play a part.