Open format
An open format is a published specification for storing digital data that can be used without legal or technical restrictions.
The development of open formats is usually under the supervision of an openly accessible body . Open formats have both proprietary as well as open source software or source Open software implementable be. Open formats, data formats such as containers , are a subset of open standards .
The primary goal of format openness is to enable the unhindered handling of data without creating legal (e.g. licenses ) or technical ( e.g. DRM ) restrictions or dependencies. A secondary goal that is often formulated is to enable competition, since the use of proprietary digital formats can easily lead to so-called vendor lock-in . Governments are showing increasing interest in the use of open formats.
In contrast to open formats, there are proprietary formats, which were mostly defined by companies. In addition to technical, commercial interests are often incorporated into the design of proprietary formats.
Examples of open formats
- CrossCrypt and dm-crypt (a container format for encrypted data carriers)
- CSV text-based table format
- DAISY Audiobook (an audio book format)
- DVI (a page description language)
- DjVu (an image format)
- FLAC (an audio format)
- FreeOTFE (a container format for encrypted data carriers)
- HTML / XHTML (a description language)
- LaTeX (a document description language)
- Office Open XML (for Office documents)
- Ogg (container format)
- Ogg Writ (a codec for animated text)
- OpenDocument (for Office documents)
- OpenEXR (an image format)
- Opus (an audio format)
- PNG (an image format)
- SVG (an image format)
- SMIL (a markup language for time-synchronized, multimedia content)
- Speex (an audio format for voices)
- Theora (a video format)
- TrueCrypt (a container format for encrypted data carriers)
- Vorbis (an audio format)
- XML (a description language)
- XSPF (a playlist format)