OpenRAW

Raw camera formats should be openly documented, not only to benefit photographers and software developers, but also to presevre those images for future generations. One hundred years from now, anyone (even aliens from another planet) can pick up a piece of film, hold it up to the sky and say "Oh, there's a picture on this." You can't do that with a photo on a CD. You need the software to do the job.

Presuming that we archive our images in the proprietary raw camera format, one day someone (our grandchildren, or archivists at the Museum of Modern Art) may need to re-open that raw file. Even if the software has changed so much that it doesn't read today's raw file, if that format is openly documented, someone will be able to access the data and figure out how to convert it.

Museums and archives are well-aware of the danger of proprietary formats. They have had to take in videotape in many different formats, each requiring a special machine to play the tapes; movie film in many formats; and worst of all, computer data in many formats (8" disk anyone?) and in many different file systems. Many of these file systems were proprietary as vendors approached businesses with "custom solutions" for their data storage and retrieval. Many were just word processing, database and spreadsheet programs no longer made, or that run under DOS or even older OSes. Getting the data out of these systems is difficult at best, and impossible at worst.

We don't need our photographs to be locked up by a single camera company. We want the best quality possible, which is always achieved through the use of the raw camera file. But we need to be certain that access to that file will always be possible, regardless of what operating system we use or how much the camera manufacturer will alter the format. With open documentation, that is assured.
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http://www.mikekellerphoto.com