"Ciaran O'Riordan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Federico Mena Quintero <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > [...]"certification levels" for GNOME > > > > [...]ISVs are starting to develop GNOME-ish apps (c.f. Adobe Acrobat > > > > Reader). > > GNOME hackers are working on free software replacements for Acrobat and many > other pieces of proprietary software. > > Telling Adobe how to improve Acrobat makes the job of the Gpdf and Evince > developers more difficult. (plus other GNOME pdf viewer projects.)
As one of the main evince[1] developers, I feel like I have to reply to this comment. I don't feel at all that spending time helping Acrobat improve their product is detrimental to evince at all. In fact, when Acrobat came out, I was really disappointed at how poor an integration job they'd done and felt that we really needed to work with them to improve it. There are a couple reasons I don't feel threatened by Acroread * Evince is free software. I personally don't feel that the existence of non-free software keeps free software from developing. The benefits of it are too great. * Poppler isn't able to render every single PDF out there (though we are getting better!) Having Acroread as a fallback means that users of Free systems will be able to get work done. * The Evince team is writing a totally different application than Acroread. Acroread is a giant, fully-featured pdf viewer that supports every obscure feature that the PDF spec covers. We aim to provide a reader that's optimized for reading documents, and covers the sensible bulk of PDFs. Additionally, we are planning on being the default 'print preview' feature for GNOME, which is a role totally unsuited for Acroread. * I know that our efforts stand on their own, and that in time, users who know nothing of licensing will pick Evince over Acroread. * For all we know, Acroread might be Free software someday. I'd love if it was a great product that they opened up instead of a poor one. Thanks, -Jonathan [1] Which has replaced gpdf _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
