I was not the only one initially confused about OpenMeta and Mavericks tags. In the latest Macpowerusers, David Sparks asks Brett Terpstra what is the difference. It turns out OpenMeta and Mavericks tags are the same thing.
I figured this out as over the last few weeks my OpenMeta tasks have gradually and magically become Mavericks tags with no action on my part. Thus, several years I have spent tagging my reference files are not lost! Brett thinks in five years hierarchical folders will be all but gone from personal computers, replaced by tags. I am trying to prepare.
Academic workflows on a Mac 
Hi Aleh,
I started out with Macs decades ago now and have been progressively drawn into the assumption that tagging practices were a standard part of academic workflows across most platforms. I think it may have been the ‘Open’Meta label that did it.
Recent collaboration over a book project with a Windows user has corrected this error in thinking, Apple, it seems, kicked off the tagging thing and as you say above has moved the standardisation process on with the auto-merging of Yosemite and OpenMeta within OS X.
It just seems a crying shame that tagging through Dropbox and other file sharing systems doesn’t bring the benefit of tag sharing to everyone, no matter which platform they use, in a seamless, transparent way.
As for folders going the way of the DoDo, until there is a widely accepted, ‘future-proof’ standard for tagging, users may be cautious of trusting their filing strategy to tags alone..
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Norman, I fully agree. Tagging is very useful individually but is not ready for sharing cross-platform.
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