The Sunlight Foundation summarized this well:

f we are ask our government to make information about itself available to the public, documents should be released in a way that everyone can access. Access to government information should not be only for the privileged few that can afford expensive commercial software needed to open files in proprietary formats. The public should be able to use any device, operating system, or software of their choosing without having to worry about what documents and data they won't be able to access.

While we also advocate for the use of open document formats, it is more important to release data in appropriate formats. Data should be delivered at cost of reproduction only and in standard formats accessible to programmers as well as data analysts with commercial software access.

Here at InfoAlamedaCounty we believe strongly in openness and the democratization of data, hence our new policies adopted for our new platform mean that all data we publish into our online mapping platform will also be made available in open formats for other users, residents and data analysts to use as they desire. Our commitment to open data must be reflected in our own work, not just in the government agencies we work with. We will soon be making many datasets available as a direct geofeed and will be turning on the GIS Server behind our interactive platform for public access also- so other GIS users can tap into our data warehouse directly for their own work - no searching around to find a dataset, just connect and use!