OpenRAW

That is just ridiculous. Adobe has published the DNG standard and it has been widely adopted by software developers. Adobe has no real control over DNG from here on out. They can't suddenly make a new incompatible version that requires new software, nor do they have any reason to.

A great many of your beloved modern standards evolved from one or more commercial companies' initial efforts. I am sure that Adobe would be more than happy to see DNG adopted as an ISO standard in due course.

James, I'm with Peter on this. Let's recap what happened:

Adobe used their extensive practical knowledge & experience of supporting the Raw formats of about 70 or so cameras to develop a general Raw format, based heavily on existing international standards, that could support those cameras and lots more.

They then published the specification, publicised it, and published a global licence to give people free use of it.

They provided free upgrades to their then-current photo-editors, PS CS and Elements 3.0, to support DNG. As an option, not coerced.

Their altruistic masterstroke was to provide the free DNG Converter, which, at a stroke, goes a long way to satisfying the goals of this website:

Worried about withdrawal of support for your D30? Run them though the converter, and you end up with Raw files with a much longer life.

Do you want to write your own photo-editor to handle Raw files, but don't want to decode all those proprietary formats? Then just support DNG, and tell your users to convert their Raw files with the DNG Converter first. Your users will be using free Adobe software and have no need to buy a single Adobe product!

Do you use PS CS, but you have a new camera whose Raw format is only supported by later versions of Photoshop such as CS2, and you don't want to upgrade? Then convert those Raw files to DNG, and continue to use CS!

Professional photographers are starting to switch their workflow to DNG, for all the sorts of reasons described by this website. (So are amateurs like myself). No one is coercing us to do so.

DNG is becoming popular with asset management packages, such as photograph-databases, because it vastly reduces the variety of formats they have to deal with. They are doing this because they see the benefits, not because Adobe can force them to.

Other Raw processors and viewers, etc, are getting on board. Of their own free will - it makes sense to them.

Dave Coffin, an independent programmer who must be one of the planet's leading experts on Raw formats, perhaps THE leading expert, appears enthusiastic, and is restructuring his (freely-available) code accordingly. That will feed into the many other products that use his code. As a result, all those people who want an alternative to their camera manufacturer's software for handling their Raw files will have a choice. And that choice need not use Adobe products - many people benefiting from DNG will never spend a penny with Adobe!

I am not aware of anyone or any organisation that has been coerced by Adobe over DNG. They are adopting it because it makes sense to them.

One of the most credible ways of developing open standards is for companies to donate a piece of working technology, or a proven specification. This can be much sounder and faster than trying to devise a new standard "academically", and then having to get the bugs out and convince people. (Is it W3C that insists that there are a couple of working implementations before they will endorse a new standard, to ensure that their standards are practical?)

How did the standard for 35mm still film arise? Wasn't it devised by Leica, based in cine film, then in effect donated to the world? It wasn't the result of an academic working party!

Microsoft dominate because they supply ubiquitous products, not because they own standards.

If you don't agree with DNG, or don't agree with Adobe owning such a key standard, then you and others are free to develop an alternative. The people and organisations that use DNG would be able to adopt your proposal if they wanted to, because Adobe probably hasn't the power to stop them. But I'll bet they wouldn't adopt your proposal, and would mutter "a case of not invented here!"

But if you do develop your own standard, I ask that you ensure that DNG format can be mechanistically converted to your format, because the number of images in DNG format in the world must be very large by now, about 7 months after DNG was launched.

Did I ever say they were coercing or intimidating anyone? Their goals are fine by me. I don't really have a problem with Adobe, as a company. But they are just that, a company. With profit-margins and bottom-lines. And while they may be one of the more progressive companies out there and they seem to be a rather good company. They are establishing a market dominance I am becoming AFRAID of.

So basically what Adobe did was to creat yet another RAW format when there are already 70+ formats out there? An amalgam for sure, but with Adobes' name and under their regulation.

Isn't competition supposed to rule the day in capitalism? Where is Adobes' competition? To give them (by support at this point) ... to allow them to establish yet another point of dominance in an already dominant position of the new field of the digital darkroom? I say no.