What formats does Project Gutenberg publish?
In principle, there’s no format that we won’t publish, but, in practice, we prefer formats that are open and editable. An open format is one whose structure is publicly defined and documented, and not burdened with patent or trade secret or copy-protection (a.k.a. “DRM”) restrictions. Anyone can write a reader or creator for an open format, and in 500 years’ time, anyone interested will still be able to write a program to display the file. Closed formats, by contrast, will almost certainly be unreadable in just a few decades, when the companies now promoting them disappear, or lose interest, or decide to stop supporting them because they want to sell a replacement. Being able to edit the file is also important. We make corrections to our editions constantly, and it is important to us that we should be able to update our files easily. If adding one word to a sentence involves a complete re-marking of the whole text and a complete rebuild of the file, we have to ask ourselves whether thi
