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May 23, 2006
McNealy on PDF royalties
McNealy on PDF royalties: Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Systems, says something I can't quite make jibe with the world I know: "Let's take document formats. It's actually a very topical and raging debate right now. Everybody's got Word documents, and spreadsheets, and presentations and other things. What format do you save them to so you can render, modify and share? Do you do it in Office so that you have to buy an Intel and Microsoft computer to get at your own data? Do you do it on PDF so everyone has to go to Adobe and pay a royalty? Or do you do it in an open format?" People make PDF without paying Adobe anything, just like they make SWF without paying Adobe anything. A general web search turns up no immediately plausible hits, and an Adobe-specific search brings up a PDF talking about licensing the optional Adobe PDF Library, for assured predictability and quality. (fwiw, Adobe is working on Open Document Format, too.) I guess he probably meant something other than what he was reported as saying...?
Posted by JohnDowdell at May 23, 2006 11:33 AM
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Comments
I thought he was clear - "render, modify and share".
With PDF you can render and share for free (using PDFCreator for instance), but your audience cannot modify your PDFs unless they have Adobe's commercial Acrobat tools - has that changed, or is there an open/free alternative to modify PDFs?
Posted by: Brent Ashley at May 23, 2006 12:07 PM
Whether or not free/open tools for modifying PDFs currently exist I suppose the open format point is the real question. If one were to build a PDF modification program, would royalties be due to Adobe for distributing software that uses the PDF format? The answer to that question will answer the point of PDF's openness.
Of course, since PDF is meant to represent a consistently rendered document, I'm not sure why one would want to share documents you expect to be modified in that format.
Posted by: Brent Ashley at May 23, 2006 12:13 PM
Brent, I'm currently working on a machine with a closed, proprietary CPU.... ;-)
For an audience member modifying a PDF, what type of modifications do you think McNealy might have been thinking of but did not describe? (The free Adobe Reader can add annotations to documents which permit this, but I don't think this is an exclusive ability.)
Bottom line: His quote about "everyone has to go to Adobe and pay a royalty" makes it hard to understand what he might have actually been thinking.
Posted by: John Dowdell at May 23, 2006 12:57 PM