Attached Link: http://www.openraw.org/

Interesting discussion, with valid points of view on both sides. RAW is, well RAW! It is very tied to the hardware, which has been improving and changing (and getting cheaper) at a very fast rate. The notion of a "Standard RAW" file is a bit of an oxymoron. That is why camera manufacturers do conversion in the camera to something which is a Standard, like JPEG or TIFF. Even with TIFF, however, some information has been modified from the original. We have seen the benefits of workflow directly on the RAW numbers. And the software from the manufacturers is not always the most cutting-edge in features or user friendliness. Opening up RAW formats is a very difficult thing for manufacturers to do. Suppose some 3rd party developer comes up with a new, highly popular, image processing program. Now, the camera manufacturer wants to make a hardware change to improve quality or cost. Suddenly the changes made by the camera manufacturer have "broken" the 3rd party application, and many folks (called Customers) are unhappy. Even if the camera manufacturer freely supplies any new information, it will be a while, if ever, before the 3rd party developer can get around to upgrading. Unhappy people. To me, the answers seem to be close to what is actually being done now: a) Licensing agreements between the camera manufacturers and 3rd party developers. With NDA's enabling any specifications to be shared early. b) A higher quality, more richly tagged standard format. Maybe a super-TIFF. I'd guess, when realy looking into Adobe's proposals, this is what they really mean by a Standard RAW?

I saw this site yesterday...meant to post it but you beat me to it. Thanks! :)