Hello !
- Robert W Best rwbest@sapo.pt [2010-10-12 16:03:54 +0100]:
Hello, what's wrong about Adobe? They gave PDF to the world free and documented. I agree fully with your actions against Microsoft, but against Adobe I don't understand. Please clarify.
The point of the current campaign for the removal of advertisements for non-free PDF readers, the FSFE is not to discredit or attack directly Adobe Systems Inc.
What we intend with this campaign is to reestablish a free competition in the market in that no software should benefit from a public support without having to pay for it. And even in this case, this is a distortion of the market in favor of one software, and worse one software model. Public institutions have made a vow of neutrality towards the market and shall be made aware that with these simingly innocent recommandations, they are destabilizing the market. The software that governments advertise for gets an advantage from the public support they receive, and this support prejudices smaller companies, be they proprietary or free software companies.
PDF is an Open Standard and as such can be equally read by all software that is designed to read the standard. When public institutions state "you need to download Adobe reader to read this file" they are ignoring the alternatives and prejudicing them. They don't stand a chance against one competitor that is recommanded by all public institutions.
Be it in the case of Microsoft or Adobe, there is always a danger for the users when the market is ruled by a monopoly of one single company, because we could end up in a situation where we are locked-in with Adobe Systems, who could then decide to change their licensing policy, or their price policy. It is what we fear with the current status of Adobe over PDF.
Furthermore, we believe that Free Software are better for society, for a question of control over the software one uses and a question of liberties. People should have the choice of the software they use to open and read one PDF document, and they are deprived from this choice when one single software is benefiting from all the marketing effects of the public support. We are not asking for government to replace commercials for Adobe or foxit or any other proprietary software by another commercial for one single Free Software. We would like them to remove any commercial, or to provide the user with a list that is neutral, so that people are offered a true choice.
I hope this explanation helped you to better understand our approach in this campaign, if not, please don't hesitate to re-contact me.
Best regards,