In 2011 Hannes Hauswedell, from our pdfreaders team, contacted Chris DiBona (see e-mails attached), and asked him to if they can make the PDF code Free Software. I just learned from an e-mail on berlin@lists.fsfe.org that google just did, see https://twitter.com/nasko/status/469595752734269440. They published it under a three clause BSD license.
thank you for taking the time for an answer. If releasing the source of the PDF-Plugin is not possible now, maybe it will be possible at a later point in time, I am sure Chrome/ium would benefit from it -- of course other Free Software projects, especially the free implementations of PDF would.
(Sorry, while attaching the other messages, I hit the wrong button. Here again the message without the attached mails from the previous e-mail.)
In 2011 Hannes Hauswedell, from our pdfreaders team, contacted Chris DiBona (see e-mails attached), and asked him to if they can make the PDF code Free Software. I just learned from an e-mail on berlin@lists.fsfe.org that google just did, see https://twitter.com/nasko/status/469595752734269440. They published it under a three clause BSD license https://code.google.com/p/pdfium/.
I propose to draft a short news item on our website about our effort to improve the situation. We could also include the new numbers for the removed bugs, and the signature list.
This is a nice quote by Hannes to begin with:
"thank you for taking the time for an answer. If releasing the source of the PDF-Plugin is not possible now, maybe it will be possible at a later point in time, I am sure Chrome/ium would benefit from it -- of course other Free Software projects, especially the free implementations of PDF would." That's what FSFE's Hannes Hauswedell wrote at the end of an e-mail conversation with Google's Chris DiBona in 2011. We are happy that now Google did exactely that...
Anyone up to write a first draft for the news item? It is not that difficult. I already filled out the necessary information to proceed (see https://wiki.fsfe.org/internal/PressReleaseGuide), so you can just start drafting:
- WHAT: Google released the PDF code of Chromium as Free Software - WHY: It shows that FSFE's long term work, shows results, as we already contacted Google about that in 2011. - AUDIENCE: Mainly existing supporters, subscribers from our public discussion lists. - WHEN: No time pressure. But the closer it is to the announcement of Google the better. - STRATEGY: Publish as a news item, afterwards distribute it on the public lists, reply on twitter, mention it in the newsletter.
So, thank you Hannes for your good work on this!!!
Best Regards, Matthias