Windows Media Photo format blogged

Thank you, thank you for this link! I have been looking for a site on this. :-)

This is lame. We don't need another image format. Scoble, please tell me how this is better than say, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP, PSD, PSB, EPS, AI, RAW, PICT, PBM, PDF, and all the other formats?

Answer that.

Have you seen www.gliffy.com? Rocks! Beats the heck out of Visio, ya think?

@Cody: If it's better AND useful, why not? Let's wait before we decide on whether we need this or not.

We don't need another proprietary format. What we need is all formats to be open standards that are also in the public domain.
Microsoft embraces and extends far too much for my liking.

Yeh I really like that format, but am I the only one who doesn't care about Dell's blog?? I've read some of the posts and they are so commercial...its obvious that the posts have been moderated by people. Thats the beauty of personal blogs and to an extent blogs at Microsoft tend to be more explicit in the information that is published as you have pointed out in several of you're interview on Channel9.

Notice how the format is royalty-free to all users and businesses except those who want to use the format on Mac, Linux, etc. machines.

"Notice how the format is royalty-free to all users and businesses except those who want to use the format on Mac, Linux, etc. machines."

That makes sense. If you've paid for Windows (either standalone or OEM), you've paid for the R&D. If you haven't, you haven't. Why should you get a free ride?

Like the banner said, "Free as in lunch."

Besides... surely the army of Open Source porgrammers could reverse engineer the format before Microsoft even releases it, right? I mean, The Collective being so smart, and all. Just like they've done with every previous file format, by every previous publisher, not to mention universal driver support on the entire installed base of all hardware. Boy, that Open Source army really can code the bejeezus out of everyone else.

Or, um, not.

Ray Lane is quoted by David DeWalt of EMC as saying that 75% of all software profit is held by three companies and 50% of that is held by Microsoft. Format lock-in is one of Microsoft’s most powerful tools for maintaining this. This “codec silo” explains why it is still so difficult to consume digital content on a large variety of platforms.

http://podslug.com/blog/?p=46

Poor Hal O'Brien, I feel sorry for you that you just don't understand the Open Source movement, and you probably don't understand *nix, either.

Poor, poor soul.

Poster 8. said:

"That makes sense. If you’ve paid for Windows (either standalone or OEM), you’ve paid for the R&D. If you haven’t, you haven’t. Why should you get a free ride?"

No, that does not make any sense whatsoever. I have paid for Windows, Office, Microsoft developer tools, and more - many times over. I want the freedom to use image formats wherever and whenever I want. I don't think that's too much to ask. For anyone that's interested, there's more on this on my blog entry "Windows Media Photo - Licensing Issues" @

http://www.psynixis.com/blog/?p=155

Hello !

I like very much your blog !

Greetings from Belgium.

Cheers.

Reno

hey great site scobleizer (your name took me a while)


www.eatseggs.wordpress.com

A lament on Microsoft trying to monopolise image formats with an unneccessary new image format.

Why? Why oh why oh why?

Whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy

Why?

Oh

Why?

A company that has had broken PNG support in their browser for years is making their own image format. How typical of Microsoft.

Simon: "I want the freedom to use image formats wherever and whenever I want. I don’t think that’s too much to ask."

I don't either. However, the way you get to set your own rules like that is by writing *your own* image format. Feel free. Until then, you'll have to be a grownup and live with compromises, no matter how much of a tantrum you make.

I mean... Take this quote from the post you point to:

"See, when I instruct lawyers to draft licenses for our software, I typically give them a brief to “make it simple, and less than two pages”. Of course, what I get back from them is usually a fifty page license. However, my response to this isn’t, “Thanks, guys, that looks really great!” - which is what it looks like the Microsoft teams do. My response is, “What part of ‘less than two pages’ didn’t you understand? Please do it again.”

That's nothing but a childish tantrum, given today's litigation prone society. One might as well say, "What part of 'fitting a locally cached copy of the entire textual contents of the Internet into 32K of HDD space' do you not understand?"

If your lawyers are so desperate for your business they're willing to knowingly re-write your licenses leaving out contingencies, so you're exposed to classes of litigation, just to quiet you down... Well, you'll get what you paid for, eventually.

Awwwwwww - Hal, you didn't like my blog! I'm so hurt ;-) LOL! Anyway, thanks so much for the lesson on litigation, software licenses and image formats! That was a kind of you. You're quite, quite wrong, by the way. But hey, don't let that stop you ;-)

If you're interested in expanding your mind, though, I'd recommend you read up on a few areas, such as "risk management, contractual aspects" and "intellectual property, licensing". It is apparent from your post that you have much to learn on these topics.

Why is a new format needed? Just because one can doesn't mean one should.

Encumbered image formats are a bad idea, or are people around here too young to remember scary words like "Unisys", "LZW", and "GIF patent"?