David B Harris writes: > However, I'm not one who believes that just because a file format only > has non-Free editor implementations that the file format itself is > non-Free. There are many ways one can edit PDFs with Free tools, but > this is beside the point for me. It's not (to my knowledge) > patent-encumbered, and Adobe hasn't (to my knowledge) attempted to stop > anybody who has written those tools that manipulate PDFs.
Adobe has patents which it claims apply to PDF and has licensed them only for the purpose of creating compatible implementations. http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/legalnotices.jsp If you modified an application which implements PDF so that it was incompatible with Adobe's specifications, you might be outside the scope of Adobe's patent license grant. -- Seth David Schoen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | Very frankly, I am opposed to people http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | being programmed by others. http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/ | -- Fred Rogers (1928-2003), | 464 U.S. 417, 445 (1984)