From jeroen@dekkers.cx Sat Mar 16 14:27:21 2002
Besides pdf isn't exactly a free standart, is it?
=20 I would rather like to have a free standard but at least PDF works nearly everywhere.
What's non-free about the PDF?
You are trying to participate a discussion about freedom and don't know what's not free with PDF?
YOu are kiddng!
Jörg
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js@cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1 schilling@fokus.gmd.de (work) chars I am J"org Schilling URL: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix
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On Sat, Mar 16, 2002 at 02:36:43PM +0100, Joerg Schilling wrote:
From jeroen@dekkers.cx Sat Mar 16 14:27:21 2002
Besides pdf isn't exactly a free standart, is it?
=20 I would rather like to have a free standard but at least PDF works nearly everywhere.
What's non-free about the PDF?
You are trying to participate a discussion about freedom and don't know what's not free with PDF?
YOu are kiddng!
I use free tools to create, view and print PDFs. I would want to know what's non-free about it.
Jeroen Dekkers
Joerg Schilling schilling@fokus.gmd.de wrote:
From jeroen@dekkers.cx Sat Mar 16 14:27:21 2002 What's non-free about the PDF?
You are trying to participate a discussion about freedom and don't know what's not free with PDF?
Well, the PDF format specification is available at http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/acrosdk/DOCS/pdfspec.pdf and there are free tools which can read and write PDF. So what's the problem with that format? It appears to me that PDF is as acceptable as the Java language, and given that "the GNU project fully supports the Java language" (see http://www.gnu.org/software/java/java.html), I doubt there are any problems with that one.
I can't see what's non-free about PDF. Could someone tell me please?
Cheers, GNU/Wolfgang
Wolfgang Jährling wolfgang@pro-linux.de writes:
I can't see what's non-free about PDF. Could someone tell me please?
Adobe tries to prevent people from writing pseudo-PDF implementations which do not conform to the spec. IIRC, they claim to have copyrighted the keyword list and license it to you only if you implement The Real Thing.
Florian Weimer wrote:
Wolfgang Jährling wolfgang@pro-linux.de writes
I can't see what's non-free about PDF. Could someone tell me please?
Adobe tries to prevent people from writing pseudo-PDF implementations which do not conform to the spec. IIRC, they claim to have copyrighted the keyword list and license it to you only if you implement The Real Thing.
To be compared with OpenGL and Mesa case which is handled much more gracefully by the industry than what Adobe does here with PDF. Adobe is abusing copyright law, if they want to control the quality of PDF tools, they should do a certification program with a test suite, a certification authority and a nice logo. But obviously if they want to monopolize the PDF market and disallow competing PDF software then unfortunately their attitude makes sense.
PS: do you have any URL about Adobe's claims?
Laurent Guerby guerby@acm.org writes:
PS: do you have any URL about Adobe's claims?
The following is an excerpt from the PDF specification, version 1.3, dated 1999-03-11.
AFAIK, a U.S. court ruled that if you can interface a software package in just one way which always leads to the same code, this code cannot be copyrighted, so it is a bit questionable if the Adobe approach works at all.
| 1.7 Copyright permission to use PDF | | The general idea of utilizing an interchange format for final-form | documents is in the public domain. Anyone is free to devise his or her | own set of unique commands and data structures that define an | interchange format for final-form documents. Adobe owns the copyright | in the data structures, operators, and the written specification for | the particular interchange format called the Portable Document | Format. These elements may not be copied without Adobe's permission. | | Adobe will enforce its copyright. Adobe's intention is to maintain the | integrity of the Portable Document Format as a standard. This enables | the public to distinguish between the Portable Document Format and | other interchange formats for final- form documents. | | However, Adobe desires to promote the use of the Portable Document | Format for information interchange among diverse products and | applications. Accordingly, Adobe gives copyright permission to anyone | to: | | | · Prepare files in which the file content conforms to the Portable | Document Format. | | · Write drivers and applications that produce output represented in | the Portable Document Format. | | · Write software that accepts input in the form of the Portable | Document Format and displays the results, prints the results, or | otherwise interprets a file represented in the Portable Document | Format. | | · Copy Adobe's copyrighted list of operators and data structures, | as well as the PDF sample code and PostScript language Function | definitions in the written specification, to the extent | necessary to use the Portable Document Format for the above | purposes. | | The only condition on such copyright permission is that anyone who | uses the copyrighted list of operators and data structures in this way | must include an appropriate copyright notice. | | This limited right to use the copyrighted list of operators and data | structures does not include the right to copy the Portable Document | Format Reference Manual, other copyrighted material from Adobe, or the | software in any of Adobe's products which use the Portable Document | Format, in whole or in part, nor does it include the right to use any | Adobe patents.
Florian Weimer wrote:
The following is an excerpt from the PDF specification, version 1.3, dated 1999-03-11.
Hmmm. I don't see what's bad about that. They do claim the copyright on the specification of PDF, which is a book so it is reasonable, they do give authorization to implement it and even directly copying some of the stuff from the book as long as you put a copyright notice, which is also reasonable. Of course their copyright claims can't go behind what is copyrightable, and some spec, algorithm or data structure are not copyrightable, but then it is reasonable for Adobe not to say what and what piece of the spec is copyrightable or not, GNU sources don't do that either, they say the whole thing is copyrighted, but obviously some pieces do not fall under copyright.
The texinfo manuals says that PDF is a free format, see http://www.gnu.org/manual/texinfo/html_node/texinfo_240.html and I'm not able to find anything that would say otherwise on the FSF web site.
So I have retract what I said about Adobe and PDF, and I apologize for my previous email if anyone from Adobe was offensed, at least until the matter is made clearer to the non-lawyer I am :).
Does someone at FSFE knows RMS stance on this? If not I can drop him an email.
=?iso-8859-1?Q?Wolfgang_J=E4hrling?= wolfgang@pro-linux.de wrote:
[...] It appears to me that PDF is as acceptable as the Java language, and given that "the GNU project fully supports the Jav= a language" (see http://www.gnu.org/software/java/java.html), I doubt there are any problems with that one.
Some of us are concerned by any "standard" that is controlled by a single vendor company. The same for PDF as it is for Java. That on its own does not make it not free (for some value of freedom), but it does make it a little worrying: what if the vendor decides to do X, Y or Z to block Free Software tools? Can we successfully fork the standard?
MJ Ray markj@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk writes:
Some of us are concerned by any "standard" that is controlled by a single vendor company. The same for PDF as it is for Java. That on its own does not make it not free (for some value of freedom), but it does make it a little worrying: what if the vendor decides to do X, Y or Z to block Free Software tools? Can we successfully fork the standard?
We can just keep to older versions of the standard. In other contexts, proprietary software vendors to it all the time, so why shouldn't we be able to do it, too?
Having standards is neiter necessary nor sufficient for an open infrastructure.