JD on EP

I guess I'm not following the details close enough. Is PDF an open standard for software makers for both reading and producing PDF content or not? Or is there a monopoly clause in the 'open-ness'? If I wrote some software today that exported to PDF then later it became popular such that nearly everyone had a copy, would I later get sued by Adobe retroactively?

The other thing I'm not clear on - Microsoft is not a free product, it must be purchased (just like Adobe Acrobat), so what is the issue exactly, the wide deployment of Office compared to Acrobat?

Thanks, John. I know you'll do your best to make clearer these muddy waters.

That pretty much confirms what I thought was going on. It's not an anti-MS bias, they just wanted to give upstarts like OOo a fighting chance now that their gaining some popularity.

Of course, I'm sure selling millions of copies of Acrobat to enterprises married to MS Office isn't a bad reason either. ;)

Why have WinZip never been incorporated into Windows/MSOffice? Essentially it's as useful as quickly printing to pdf from within Office. There are tools and products like Acrobat and Winzip that can easily be downloaded. Not everything needs to be packed tightly with MS.

I don't think many people buy this talk that Adobe is somehow playing the hero and saving the world from Microsoft crushing innovation. It's all about Adobe not wanting to lose Acrobat revenue. It has nothing to do with anything else. PDF support has been the #1 most customer requested feature for the Office team for quite some time now. It's sad that Adobe has to be a little bitch about this. I feel sorry for all you Macromedia guys who used to work for a company that everyone generally liked...

Jeff, I never do well in those "'is' [something] [some label]" discussions... "Is Britney Spears art?", "Is peanut butter fattening?" "Is some format an open standard?"... Wikipedia has background on how I think here.

I still don't know any of the content of those purported exec meetings. I don't know what the actual issues are... I just know the claims raised in the media campaign. Fortunately I don't need to act on that story myself, and instead can afford to wait and learn more.