Hi Andreas, Hi Chris,
I am originally German I keep up with German online news, so I actually did hear about your campaign. Thanks for the good work!
Thanks, good to see that we have some impact!
I am cc'ing Chris Jones, the co-creator of pdf.js.
I am glad you like pdf.js. We started the project to create an enabling technology that can be used in many different forms to eliminate proprietary native code PDF readers from the web. pdf.js can be used on the client side in browsers, but its also useful for server-side applications. By hosting a copy of pdf.js servers can eliminate the need for users to install a PDF-plugin in the first place. All thats needed is a modern HTML5-compliant browser to access the PDFs stored on the server.
We plan on shipping a pdf.js-based truly open and free PDF-reader with Firefox in the future. We already have a beta-quality extension.
Great!
We could work with Mozilla's pdf.js team
How are you (and your team) related to Mozilla's team? I though that was the same thing...
to accelerate the work on the extension and feature that on your page,
Yes, featuring the extension is the least we can do! How could we help to accelerate work on the extension?
or even talk to our market folks about creating a special FSFE edition of Firefox that bundles the extension by default. Let me know if you are interested in this.
That might be an option, but really we would be interested in seeing the extension being included upstream (once its ready for adoption). A strength of pdfreaders.org is that it is "vendor neutral" and recommending something FSFE-labeled through it would violate that.
pdf.js is an open technology and we are very interested in other parties adopting it. We could jointly approach Google for example and see if they are willing to obsolete their proprietary closed-source native code PDF reader (based on FoxIt I believe) in favor of an open solution.
That is something we thought about as well, indeed proprietary default plugins in Chrome are worrisome. As I mentioned before, we were in contact with the Chrom[e|ium] team and also Chris DiBona on the matter about a year ago. If we prove that one can actually make a good portable Free PDF-Plugin that will counter some of their arguments.
Last but not least, FSF(E) and the Mozilla Foundation are obviously closely aligned in their mission. It might make sense for you to talk to our foundation and see if Mozilla should join this campaign. In the end, we are all interested in ridding the web of proprietary technology.
That sounds like a good idea. We are currently discussing some things internally concerning the future of the campaign, and we are also discussing with our sister organization, the FSF about some changes. I am not sure whether it would be possible for Mozilla to "join" the campaign in the current form, because - as stated above - we are vendor neutral, but I am very confident that we could cooperate more closely on these issues and future actions.
Who would we have to contact at the Mozilla foundation on this matter?