In our lab we have made a decision that since our lab is funded, in part, by tax dollars, we would attempt to avoid using any proprietry file formats in any of our research. Our policy ensures that our research is available to the widest range of other researchers, scientists, and taxpayers. Thus we are using the linux operating system, GNU software, and file formats that can be read and understood by software that is available to anyone free of charge and without suffering from deliberate obfuscation of the principles of operation of the software. (We have decided to use only COSHER software within our research lab.) Accordingly, all of the email you have sent us as "msword" attachments has been completely unintelligible to us.
We would be curious what fraction of your organization has succumbed to the proprietary file-format hegemony, which, we believe is a serious detriment to open scientific and scholarly discourse, and to the free exchange and archival of scientific findings, etc.. Even if that attachment is readable now, will it be readable in the coming years?
In order to help you understand how useless the attachment you just sent us appears on our computer screen, please consider the following: the way it looks to us can be best summarized by way of the following "attachment" (or parody of attachment):
--Part9808181526.J Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
The following is a document written in MacroHard Text, and can only be read by those who have purchased MacroHard's latest version of Text.
Linux users, or others who do not like MacroHard's hegemony, or who do not like obfuscation of computer systems, are a small and irrelevant segment of the population.
The use of proprietary file formats by Government funded organizations has been found to be acceptable, even though many of the taxpayers who should otherwise have free access to the information will be forced to purchase MacroHard's House98 suite of tools, including MacroHard Text.
House98 may be purchased at Tradeshow98, at Conference98, or in any of the exhibition spaces such as The Gallery (TM), The Museum (TM), or The Country (TM), or may be ordered over The Telephone (TM), using The Credit Card (TM).
Text (TM), Letter (TM), Sentence (TM), Paragraph (TM), and Book (TM) are registered trademarks of MacroHard.
PLEASE SEE ATTACHED.
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