[Liverpool] proprietary formats @ liverpool uni

[Sujita Purushothaman]

Alan Pope wrote:
> Whilst I agree that using non-free formats is bad, I think you could 
> possibly have approached this in a somewhat less confrontational manner.
>   
I think lecturers have the obligation to be inclusive. I wouldn't blame 
students for being confrontational when lecturers are not inclusive. If 
someone came up to me and said, I don't have any software that can read 
your PDF  handouts, I would immediately do 3 things:
1. Point and help him/her install Adobe Reader.
2. Give the same document in word and try to accommodate them as far as 
possible next time.
3. Then give a lecture about free, open and closed file formats. I do 
this as much as possible anyway. :-)

Outside an educational establishment, I would skip 1 and 2.

Vladimir: You could also point them to the VirtualDub case and explain 
how once you save your data in one format you are effectively saying I'm 
going to pay Microsoft money for as long as I want access to this data, 
especially considering that software is now leased instead of bought.

Rgds,
Sujita