Dear Andreas, (feel free to fwd this to your mail-list or other devs)
I am Hannes of the German Team of FSFE. As you may know, we have been doing a campaign on alternatives to Adobe's Acrobat Reader: http://pdfreaders.org
Beside offering the web-site as a portal, we had a huge campaign to have Adobe-Ads removed (or replaced) on european government and public organisation web-sites. We even had questions asked in the EU parliament concerning the issue. The FSF is thinking about doing a similar campaign in the states, so we expect even more visitors in the future.
Anyway, we think it is really great that you are working on PDF.js, especially since the Chrome PDF-plugin is proprietary (we were and are in contact with Google on this, but it doesn't look like they will release any code soon).
We wanted to know whether you would like us to advertise pdf.js on our about page, thereby using some of our publicity to maybe get you more attention (and possibly extra devs). Something along the lines: "Help the Mozilla Foundation develop a Free Java-Script-based PDF-Reader that works on all web-sites."
Of course, once it matures a bit further, we will also list it with the readers on the front page (we are currently thinking about redesigning that a little to feature browsers/plugins more prominently).
We would also like to point out that we will recommend Firefox, should it ever ship with a Free Software PDF-plugin by default. Maybe that helps you argue for adoption in Firefox down the line ;)
Happy new years celebrations!
Hi Hannes,
I am originally German I keep up with German online news, so I actually did hear about your campaign. Thanks for the good work!
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. We could work with Mozilla's pdf.js team to accelerate the work on the extension and feature that on your page, 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.
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.
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.
Best regards,
Andreas
Anyway, we think it is really great that you are working on PDF.js, especially since the Chrome PDF-plugin is proprietary (we were and are in contact with Google on this, but it doesn't look like they will release any code soon).
We wanted to know whether you would like us to advertise pdf.js on our about page, thereby using some of our publicity to maybe get you more attention (and possibly extra devs). Something along the lines: "Help the Mozilla Foundation develop a Free Java-Script-based PDF-Reader that works on all web-sites."
Of course, once it matures a bit further, we will also list it with the readers on the front page (we are currently thinking about redesigning that a little to feature browsers/plugins more prominently).
We would also like to point out that we will recommend Firefox, should it ever ship with a Free Software PDF-plugin by default. Maybe that helps you argue for adoption in Firefox down the line ;)
Happy new years celebrations!
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐Best Regards, │ Free Software Foundation Europe █▉ │ Hannes Hauswedell │ German Team █▉█▉█▉ │ │ Coordinator for pdfreaders.org ▉▉ │ └─────────────────────────────────────────┘
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?
[ lead developer of pdf.js]
h2@fsfe.org
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?
My idea is that we * keep pushing Mozilla to put more resources into pdf.js, so that it gets done more quickly * work on redesigning pdfreaders.org * launch the new pdfreaders.org simultaneously with the first Firefox version that ships with native PDF-support * we write a press release together with the Mozilla foundation in which we ...* highlight the importance of open standards and Free Software reading Open Standards, ...* mention both the PDFReaders Site update and the Firefox plugin that is now default ...* say that we are disappointed that Google is not helping in this matter, but instead developing a proprietary plugin; that we would greatly appreciate if they adopt the Free js-based Plugin or release the source of their PDF-plugin
This of course implies 1) we can agree on working together with Mozilla on this 2) the timeframes for our redesign and bringing the plugin to a useable state somewhat coincide
What do you think?
mk, feel free to fwd this to team@ if you think it relevant to the discussion there.
On 31.12.2011 13:38, Sam Geeraerts wrote:
Hannes Hauswedell wrote:
We would also like to point out that we will recommend Firefox, should it ever ship with a Free Software PDF-plugin by default.
What's FSFE's policy on Firefox' non-free binaries and recommending non-free add-ons?
I am not sure there is a policy. Of course we do not recommend non-free software, but IIRC the only/main problem with Firefox was the trademarked artwork, or not? Suggesting non-free plugins is of course not ideal, but as long as they don't ship any non-free plugins and don't pull them in automatically I don't see a problem.
AFAIK the binaries are identical from what you can build from source, so that is not a real issue for me either (this is different from chrome VS chromium, where chrome actually contains non-free software, i.e. flash, pdf-plugin etc).
And Mozilla aids the struggle for Software Freedom greatly, newer versions of Firefox and thunderbird all show the info "Mozilla Firefox is free and open source Software. Learn more about your rights and freedoms" (or something similar) on first start, which probably reaches more people than most of our campaigns combined. Also Mozilla did some very hard decisions to help promote Open Standards. Not opening the HTML5-capapbilities to plugins is one such decision which angered most (not caring) users, because they wanted h264 support -- a political move to support Theora and WebM.
=> I am fine recommending Firefox, but thats just my humble opinion
MK, can you discuss this on team@ ?
We are nowhere near the point where we will recommend Firefox with pdf.js, but we should agree early on, if we plan to work together with Mozilla on this.
* Hannes Hauswedell h2@fsfe.org [2011-12-31 14:16:42 +0100]:
MK, can you discuss this on team@ ?
Yes, I will forward this question.
Regards, Matthias