Cory, DNG format is an open specification, published and provided by Adobe with no license fees for its use. It is not open source as it contains no source code. However, there's no reason that open source products cannot be based on the specification ... the license clearly defines what can or cannot be considered DNG specification, that's it, and places no restrictions on redistribution in implementation. To wit: dcraw uses the DNG specification and it is an open source software product, it meets all the rules and licensing requirements.
So if there was an ecology of software products that allowed compatibility with DNG format on Linux, it would be just fine to use it ... a PEF to DNG converter would be the FIRST product necessary for this until the introduction of the K10D for an all Linux image processing workflow. But little serious user-end image processing happens on Linux at present given its limitations in system wide color management and good color managed applications at the user-end level. Lots of high- end image processing happens (render farms for the cine industry's animation and cgi work) on specialized, non-open-source software products. For user-end stuff, if you want to find value in PEF to DNG conversion, start promoting DNG as a RAW container format, promote more and better user-end color management and applications (whether open source or not) and build the software ecology ... and user base. A business case for this that returns profit on the investment would then become appealing to graphics software providers. Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
