Hi Fellows,
a little late I will briefly summerize the contents and results of our conference call and the following discussions with Adobe. I'll try to be complete and hope to be up-to-date; being in Turkey right now, with no internet access except Internet-Cafes, I am expieriencing the drawbacks of server-stored E-Mails (IMAP). (And the drawbacks of being to unable to ask for the possibility of hooking up you own computer in the cafe... and the usab?l?ty hell of an operat?ng system whose language cant be changed)
Georg will hopefully add the points I missed and correct those that I got wrong!
Greetings from Antalya, Hannes
People involved in the conference call: - Georg and myself for FSFE and pdfreaders.org - four people from Adobe, including the people responsible for Standards and Interoperability and the Chief Architect for PDF
Results of the conference call:
1. ISO and STANDARDS: - they have only minor corrections to our page about PDF-Version and Standards - the complete text of the ISO-Standard is available for free on adobe.com (you do not have to buy it from ISO)
2.PATENTS: - the royalty free license agreement covers all versions and sub-standards up to and including the ISO-Standard and will include future versions, they are try?ng to make that more clear ?n the future -> this is good (we weren't sure about this before) - the license covers all "standard compliant software", where "standard compliant software" is defined as any "software reading standard compliant files". -> this is good because it basically covers *any* (Free) Software dealing with PDF-Files -> but it also means that the hypothetical case where a covered algorithm used by (Free) Software dealing with PDF and reused in a (Free) Software not dealing with PDF is not covered by the agreement -> UPDATE: qu?ckly scann?ng the last E-Ma?ls between Georg and Adobe I am not sure whether realy all parts of PDF are covered, maybe Georg, can make that clearer - Adobe is not willing to add a clause to the license agreement covering all uses of the patents in any kind of (copyleft) Free Software -> not surprising, but worth the try!
3. ERROR HANDLING: - this was brought up by different pdfreader-developers, because "broken" PDF Files are a major source of trouble for them ("broken" files are not realized as being broken, because they are rendered fine in Acroread) -> Adobe admitted that they do extensive error handling if a file does not conform to the standard ("to improve user experience") -> a lot of this behaviour is described in the "Appendices H" to all the PDF-Standards. Note that these Appendices ARE NOT INCLUDED in the versions published by ISO, only in the version published by Adobe! -> Adobe promised to update and improve this information
4. Overall SUPPORT for Free PDFReaders: - we asked if Adobe could offer a web-portal for developers of (Free) Software, where important information could be gathered and questions asked (e.g. concerning error-handling) -> they replied that they in fact have Adobe DEVNET [ TODO FIND LINK ] that covers most of what we asked. They agreed that it is not that easy to find and promised to change that. They also agreed to update information available there and maybe extend the platform to improve interoperability - we asked them if they could provide or develop a platform to do interoperability and compatibility tests of their software and other (free) PDF Software -> they replied that they don't think that this is their responsibility, which isn't too surprising, because a platform like that will probably be rather expensive and the benefit to Adobe not obvious
5. Summary and Outlook: - the conference call went very well from a personal point of view, they took us seriously and we didn't flame them for distributing Flash ;) - we have the same interest concerning PDF: we want to improve PDF as an Open Standard and are not interested in other competing and proprietary or less open formats gaining market share - I am not completely sure that they w?ll do all the th?ngs they sa?d, but I have a pos?t?ve overall feel?ng - they are willing to work with us in the future and I am convinced that we can further improve Free PDF-Software together!