In last week’s post [Cutting Through The Fog: Dependency On Proprietary Standards Is Not Good For Business [Soapbox]](http://soapbox.millersamuelv2.wpenginepowered.com/?p=105), I referred to the strange press release from ACI actually announcing they did not renew their agreement with several vendors.

Apparently Appraisal.com and Day One have released their own [press release explaining their side of the story [Appraisal Buzz].](http://nm.appraisalbuzz.com/templates/appraisalbuzz-article.aspx?articleid=41&zoneid=1) The press release headline “Accelerated adoption of MISMO & AI Ready standards makes Lighthouse format increasingly outdated” says it all and further indicated that ACI’s move would only affect 5% of the 40,000 appraisers that use their service.

This back and forth positioning between these vendors seems to drive home the point that proprietary formats for collaberation or exchange of data is not good for our industry because it makes all of particularly vulnerable to the health or strategy of the licensor. An industry open source format is the better way.

Can you imagine the commercial appraisal world without Microsoft Office? It can be unstable, buggy, expensive to upgrade and annoying to use at times but there are limited alternatives, primarily because both the user and the vendor must use the same software or have a working translator. Competitors were crushed a long time ago.

I am not happy with a business world without competition in software. Innovations and improvements wane over time. We all lose.