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License fee for PDF export?

schiessle

Monday 05 June 2006

As a GNU/Linux user i'm used to have PDF export in almost every program. With Office 2007 Microsoft finally wants to offer this common feature to their users too.
But it seems like Adobe doesn't like this idea. As cnet reported Adobe asked Microsoft to remove the PDF export feature or pay a fee for it. Brian Jones from Microsoft has published some information, too.

Adobe promotes PDF as an open standard. But if Adobe now starts to sue competitors they can no longer claim that PDF is an open standard.
What does this mean for all the Free Software applications with PDF export and for the exchange of documents in general? If Adobe starts to sue Microsoft, who will be the next victim?
It would be a big loss for everyone if we can no loger rely on PDF as an open standard.

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Comments

about adobe

nanda

Friday 09 June 2006

What they say is that microsoft would then kill the market of their PDF generators including this feature, as microsoft has monopoly in office applications. They say that OpenOffice.org does not represent danger because has a small market share.

They even said that they would open a anti-truste case against Microsoft in case they include the feature.

It makes me think whether they would go agains the OpenOffice.org users in case OpenOffice.org get a bigger part of the market or not. Who knows?

adobe's move

maffulli

Tuesday 06 June 2006

I don't really understand Adobe's move, if not just as a mean to stop Microsoft from crossing its own fence occupying the market space of Acrobat's suite... It seems another episode of "Everybody hates Microsoft" :)

adobe...

christian_rhomberg

Monday 05 June 2006

I think Microsoft should also be able to use the "save as pdf" button, when they can't use it for free (like other software products eg. OpenOffice.org) pdf is no OPEN standard anymore....

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