OpenRAW

While what you are advocating is all very nice, I don't think the camera makers have much incentive to publish this data. There are competitive limits to the margins on their cameras, but once they have you locked in, the margins on the software are much better.

I would rather have a file format like TIFF which contained the parameter needed to convert from the manufacturers RAW to the final TIFF, from say, dcraw. Adobe probably has this already in their PSD file format but that information isn't public. Then if I save the manufacturer's RAW, my "TIFF" and the version of dcraw, I can always reproduce my image.