More open, not more rigid (Score 2, Insightful)

Standards do not have to mean that everyone has to use Open Document or something. This is only a tool MA has used to begin to escape vendor lock-in. The whole point is that if you store data, you should be making public the way that you have formatted the data in order to allow it to be translated into another format if necessary. The reason people gravitate to XML is because it is a text-based file format that can be examined, rather than a proprietary binary format with the drawbridge firmly raised and the archers searching for targets.