[Fsf-friends] Document formats

[Imran William Smith]

However, increasingly Governments are beginning to mandate or at
least prefer that their own systems use open standards.
Indeed, I am currently involved in the development of an open source policy
for Malaysia which is also likely to recommend that open standards are 
adopted.

Unfortunately, at the moment, Adobe PDF cannot be endorsed by such
initiatives as a standard to use.  Perhaps once this trend grows,
Adobe may open their standard properly, allowing not only community
viewing of the standards, but community participation in developing it.

Imran William Smith


Mahesh T. Pai wrote:

>What exactly is  a standard? How do businessess  profit from releasing
>document format specifications?
>
>Just found this interesting quote about PDF at
>http://news.com.com/2030-1046_3-5190097.html?tag=st.lh
>
>This is an interview with Bruce Chizen, Exec. VP, Adobe.
>
><quote>
>(Q) You've  documented a  number of  your key  architectures: PostScript,
>PDF,  and--albeit somewhat  reluctantly--the Type  1 font  format. But
>these are not open-source initiatives, nor are they official standards
>controlled   by   standards   bodies   like   the   World   Wide   Web
>Consortium.  Although Adobe  documents these  formats, it  alone still
>controls  them. Have  you  found a  profitable  middle ground  between
>proprietary architectures and open source? 
>
>(A)With   PostScript   and  PDF,   we   found   that  publishing   the
>specifications--making  them open,  but  not open  standards, but  not
>providing  open  source--is the  right  path  for  us. Once  something
>becomes a standard  driven by a standards body, it  moves at a glacial
>pace. And innovation slows down  significantly because you have to get
>everybody  to agree and  there's lots  of compromise.  If you  make it
>totally open source, you don't get a return on investment.
>
>We believe that by opening up the specification, we allow other people
>to take advantage  of it. But because we still own  the source, we get
>to innovate  around that standard  more quickly than anybody  else. We
>have found  that to  be a great  balance. PDF  is the best  example of
>that. We work on Acrobat, we  work on PDF, we announce the product, we
>ship it, and we open up the specification.
>
>We're already working on a whole series of applications, and we're
>already working on the next version of PDF. It seems to
>work. Customers are willing to pay a price--and even a premium--if
>they believe what they're buying is innovative and reliable.  
></quote>
>
>  
>