this is with reference to an email on some mailing lists regarding the indian govt. trying to standardize on the pdf fileformat. a discussion is erupting on whether pdf is open/muft/mukt, etc etc.
the status of the pdf fileformat's specifications have also been raised several times on the linux-delhi mailing list. so have decided to do some digging on this, and have just discovered this gem, so all of you can share this with others: source: http://odfi.org/archives/000022.html [open data format initiative] dated: june 18 2003. PDF: This is Adobe's format, used in Acrobat and various other tools. Although PDF is covered by a number of Adobe patents, according to Adobe's Legal Notices page, the patents "are licensed on a royalty-free, non-exclusive basis for the term of each patent and for the sole purpose of developing software that produces, consumes, and interprets PDF files that are compliant with the Specification." Furthermore, the license can only be terminated if the terms are violated. After some discussion on the ODFI mailing list, it was decided that PDF is "open enough." [interestingly, by contrast]: SWF: SWF is the format used to encode Macromedia Flash animations. According to the SWF license page, "No fees are required for access to the Macromedia Flash file format (SWF) or for the creation of products based on the SWF format." However, if you read the actual license, nobody is allowed to redistribute the spec (although anyone can, right now, get his or her own copy), and the license also states "You understand and agree that Macromedia may amend, modify, change, and cease distribution or production of the Specification at any time". Since Macromedia is reserving the right to effectively close the spec, it should not be considered open (despite the name of the website OpenSWF that discusses the format). *** thus, the pdf fileformat itself is royalty-free for both viewing and developing, but in raj's strict terms, is not absolutely 'mukt'. however, its use in the opensource, free community is observed: openoffice outputs to it, TeX has heavy support for it, google supports it in its search index, macintosh has it as its native fileformat, royalty-free. you know, its like the difference between postscript and ghostscript. though both are opensource, it is ghostscript which is/was under gpl and therefore mukt. the complete pdf spec could be found here http://partners.adobe.com/asn/tech/pdf/specifications.jsp along with some developer tools as well. more pdf stuff can be found at pdfzone.com, pdfplanet.com but sadly nothing much on the nitty-gritty of its exact legal status on its 'openness' and 'level of freedom'. (at what points are the terms violated?) am checking and searching thru the w3c site to see if the pdf is a w3c-approved standard format as well. so far see nothing. could someone counter-check this please. i suppose someone with high-speed access could download the documents at the adobe site mentioned above, and therefore explain to us exactly what are its terms of use. regarding the govt's stand on trying to standardizing on pdf: i feel (imho please) as long as they don't 'standardize' on the development tools, the viewing tools, and the exclusivity, it seems agreeable. for instance, as long as the pdf is generated from any authoring software including muft and mukt software, as long as free viewers are allowed (which implies no special features that are only available in other viewers), and as long as the capability to export to other fileformats is preserved and granted, its a great idea. incidentally, hazaar tools out there to do conversions for pdf to html, xml, ps, txt, rtf, and what have you. so i suppose if the govt says any data is and must be saved in other fileformats *concurrently* then its adoption is fine. my take on this: let the govt mandate standardization on pdf *provided* an xml and sgml version of the same data is created *concurrently* and these are 100% inter-operable. further, permission is granted to further inter-op to other fileformats provided they always stay 100% inter-op. what sayest thou? ?? LL ps: there is more to this, but hopefully this gets the discussion started. _______________________________________________ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
