[Wolves] PDF

Stuart Langridge sil at kryogenix.org
Mon Jun 28 22:43:21 BST 2004


Alex Gay wrote:
> We had a discussion today on the merits of office software.  I was 
> saying that OOo done everything I needed as well as exporting to PDF.  I 
> couldn't answer a question on how this was legal as PDF is owned by Adobe.
> A quick google later confirmed that according to a lot of sites the PDF 
> file format is the IP of Adobe.  I've had a good rummage through the OOo 
> Licensees and the OOo page to see if I can find any thing on this.  So 
> does anyone know how OpenOffice.org can include a PDF printer in it's 
> product for free, without getting into a majour battle over copyright 
> and patent?

PDF is an open format. Although Adobe created it, they haven't 
restricted it. They do require certain things of implementors of 
software that uses the PDF format, such as honouring the security and 
permissions settings (software should not allow cut-and-pasting from a 
PDF if this is disabled in the PDF settings, for example).

Aq.



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