Scoop’s Views

Adobe is calling Microsoft a monopoly, declaring the courts and the European Union (EU) both have declared Microsoft a monopoly. I don’t care what the EU decides, as I am an American, and, in the U.S., back in the late 1990s the courts here declared Microsoft a monopoly. In doing so, the courts ordered a break up of Microsoft business units to meet specific criteria. In doing so, the company was no longer, in the court’s determination a monopoly, so Adobe’s comment is off-base, although historically correct.

History, though, doesn’t line your pockets with cash, which is the cause of all the talk about Microsoft being a monopoly. Back in March, you see, Adobe again whined about Microsoft giving its Microsoft Office customers the ability to natively create PDF files in various programs. At this point, the mudslinging by Adobe is focused only on potential profits.

In a rant at JD on EP’s blog, written by what appears to be a former Macromedia, now Adobe employee — sorry, I didn’t spend the time on the site to validate that thinking — he says Microsoft will ensure its XPS format works better than PDF if allowed to continue having the Save As PDF feature in Microsoft Office.

The rant focuses on comments made by Bruce Chizen, Adobe’s CEO, to the Boston Globe. When JohnDowell, or “JD on EP” read the article, he said:

The key concern is that Microsoft would corrupt the file format’s predictability and functionality, as they did with Java, DHTML and email. The full quote is in the extended entry; here’s the meat: “The promise is that if you create something in PDF, it can be read, it can be displayed on any computer, on any operating system, including a lot of mobile devices today. I don’t want that promise to ever change. Microsoft, because of their monopoly position, does have the ability to change that over time, and we don’t want them to do that.”

JohnDowell goes on, reprinting the “pertinent section from The Boston Globe, which is the focus of his rant. It is:

Q. You’ve made PDF an international standard for documents, and you allow other companies to make PDF software. But when Microsoft tried to add PDF to Windows, you said no. Why?

A. They are a declared monopolist — declared not by Adobe, declared by both the US government and the European Union. We don’t want them bifurcating the standard or worse yet, making the standard worse, in favor of their proprietary solution — called XPS.

By creating PDFs that are substandard or by creating

PDFs that don’t meet the actual PDF standard, they could end up demonstrating that XPS is a better solution. They are giving away XPS creation free with the operating system, and of course they can make that more reliable than the PDF they end up creating in Microsoft Office, and we don’t want that to happen.

The promise is that if you create something in PDF, it can be read, it can be displayed on any computer, on any operating system, including a lot of mobile devices today. I don’t want that promise to ever change. Microsoft, because of their monopoly position, does have the ability to change that over time, and we don’t want them to do that.

Posted by JohnDowdell at March 11, 2007 12:07 PM

From where I sit, it sounds like everything is clearly summarized by this comment:

“By creating PDFs that are substandard or by creating PDFs that don’t meet the actual PDF standard, they could end up demonstrating that XPS is a better solution. They are giving away XPS creation free with the operating system, and of course they can make that more reliable than the PDF they end up creating in Microsoft Office, and we don’t want that to happen.”

To me, everything comes down to three points, and they are:

1. Adobe doesn’t want MS to be able to give away the ability to create PDFs for free.
2. Adobe doesn’t want MS to be able to demonstrate that, side-by-side, XPS is better than PDF (read the comments carefully in the quote).
3. Adobe wants to continue making money off PDF tools (again, see point #1).

In summary, it’s all about the money.

There is no way Adobe can argue any stance other than the economic one. Why? Because the PDF “standard” is available for anyone, and too many people have too many tools out there, which Adobe seemingly reserves the right to deny use of the PDF format to any new creator it wants, i.e., MS in this case.

There are many PDF creation tools on the market — some freeware, some shareware, and some commercial — and many of those tools are crap. They are not up-to-standard at all. The PDFs they create choke even Acrobat Professional when attempting to open PDFs created by those tools, so Adobe’s “standards compliance” argument goes right down the drain.

Adobe, a long time ago, published the PDF standard for all to use as the basis of allowing various programs to print files to PDF natively. This type of support is included in many freeware, shareware, and commercial products, including TechSmith’s SnagIt, Intuit’s QuickBooks, among many others. In fact, you can get many free PDF “writers” that create PDFs with sometimes don’t open in Adobe Acrobat, but you can also buy other PDF tools relatively inexpensive, such as FinePrint’s pdfFactory, among others, that do a seemingly great job in producing PDFs, with the tools able to mimic many of the functions of a full-blown copy of Acrobat, including “securing” or password-protecting the files.

Here’s a case of one company, which has not been declared a monopoly by the courts, calling another company, no longer a monopoly under U.S. legal description, a monopolistic, underhanded player that wants everything to go how it wants in terms of “future standards.” It’s funny, though, because what Adobe is accusing MS of doing … well, Adobe is doing with PDF. “Whine … we want … whine … PDF … whine … to be the … whine … standard for … whine … years to come … whine … so we can keep … whine, whine … making money … whine … and not allow … whine … MS the opportunity to offer … whine … PDF in Office or other tools … whine … and users will learn to use XPS … whine … and see it is better and more future-ready than PDF … whine … and we will lose money. Whine.”

To backup that point, read the final paragraph of an article, Bowing To Adobe, Microsoft Strips PDF Support From 2007 Office, by Stacy Cowley. I think you will find it rather interesting. Actually, I’d like for you to read the entire story, as the final paragraph is a terrific climax to a very odd, off-the-wall issue started by Adobe.

Last June, Cnet News.com reported Adobe was possibly preparing for a legal battle with Microsoft over the PDF capabilities in Microsoft Office 2007. One comment to the Cnet article, by reader using the moniker onthesidelines, wrote that “Autodesk, the monopoly in the CAD space, includes PDF and its own proprietary format DWF. No comments from Adobe. Hmmmm.”

Continuing, onthesidelines wrote that “[t]he [U.S.] government approved PDF as an accepted standard based on Adobe stating that anyone can develop to the PDF specification without restriction. Odd that their licensing agreement reads to the contrary. Did the wool get pulled over the eyes of our Senate? Hmmmmm.” In a concluding thought, onthesidelines wondered which company ought be the target of an anti-trust filing.

As onthesidelines noted, the PDF format specifications have been publicly released by Adobe for others to use. In fact, check them out for yourself, in PDF format, of course.

So, where should the antitrust suit begin?

I think a few whines were missed in the whining, but that seems to sum up Chizen’s whining. Instead of whining, perhaps Adobe needs to focus on new income avenues, as obviously the company is doing if you look over some projects currently in the works.

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