I recently became aware of the new initiative from Jono Bacon called “open respect”. As you may know, this campaign and accompanying website aims to improve the standard of communications between members of the Free Software community, particularly where it takes place in informal environments, such as online forums. Although this initiative resulted from some Read more »
Last weekend Matthias (Fellowship Co-ordinator) and I joined other FSFE fellows and flew to Gothenburg for FSCONS (Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit). We arrived on Friday afternoon and went straight to the venue at Gothenburg IT University. FSFE hosted a track this year called Divide and Reconquer, which focussed on the problem of the Read more »
During FSFE’s recent campaign to stop governments advertising proprietary PDF readers, a common question was raised by the public in emails and comments. “Can Free Software PDF readers match up to Adobe Acrobat Reader?” they ask. The implication of this question is that promoting alternatives to Adobe, whether they be Free Software (FS) or not, is only reasonable if they are ‘as good as’ (e.g. file compatible and feature feature identical with) Acrobat Reader.
This view undermines the PDF standard however, and falsely defines what PDF is in terms Adobe’s implementation.