Adobe & PDF: From Open Standard to Double Standard to Double Talk?

by on June 14, 2006 · 12 comments

Today Adobe finally released its statement on the whole debacle with Microsoft regarding its inclusion of PDF support into upcoming versions of Office and the Vista operating system. The statement is not completely unintelligible gibberish (despite the inclusion in my blog entry’s title of “double talk.”) Indeed, the statement is a remarkable product:of…CAPITALISM.

This concern over open standards may come across as an obscure, geek-infested issue, but at its core is good old fashioned competition. Adobe vs. Microsoft has brought out the real incentives behind open standards. It’s not about the good, pure route toward a better society. It’s about money. Make no mistake about it, companies are willingly pushing open standards to governments for corporate leverage.

Here’s a relevant part of the statement:

Adobe is committed to open standards. Adobe publishes the complete PDF specification and makes it available for free, without restrictions, without royalties, to anyone who cares to use it. Because we license the PDF specification so openly, it has become a de facto standard, used by hundreds of independent software vendors worldwide. PDF is incorporated into a number of ISO standards, and Adobe encourages developers, independent software vendors and publishers to support and embrace it.

The above is Adobe’s pitch that it has created a successful product that it wants everybody to use – except Microsoft. Because as the statement continues:

Microsoft has demonstrated a practice of using its monopoly power to undermine cross platform technologies and constrain innovation that threatens its monopolies. Microsoft’s approach has been to “embrace and extend” standards that do not come from Microsoft. Adobe’s concern is that Microsoft will fragment and possibly degrade existing and established standards, including PDF, while using its monopoly power to introduce Microsoft-controlled alternatives – such as XPS. The long-term impact of this kind of behavior is that consumers are ultimately left with fewer choices.

Fine, Adobe, do what you will. What I’m really concerned about is about government’s involvement in open standards. If open standards are the result of capitalism cloaked in the false impression of goodness for everyone, we should be wary of governments like Massachusetts singling out a particular standard for “approval.” This is what Massachusetts is already on board with by approving two file formats – Adobe PDF and the Open Document Format (ODF) as the only state approved file formats for text documents, spreadsheets, charts, and presentations (for an interesting dialogue about this, see the Harvard News Network).

So, what is the proper role for government involvement in selecting, requiring or approving an open standard? If a government is worried about the interoperability and the preservation of documents, it can include in its request for proposal a description of this concern and an “ask” for the best way to address the issue. This approach would be government relying on the market for solutions, not getting into the business of giving its stamp of approval to certain technologies. Governments that do this risk betting the farm on certain file formats over others and in the process “blessing” certain proprietary formats over others (as in PDF). Just think of the public choice implications of the rent seeking behaviors of certain companies that will want to be included on the states approval list.

Adobe’s statement concludes by stating that “Adobe welcomes innovation and competition.” Yes, but not to the detriment of its bottom line! And I don’t blame it! However, I do blame state governments that buy into the rhetoric that open standards are good and pure. Egalitarian they are not. The result of competitive capitalist desires, they are.

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About Braden Cox

Braden Cox formerly wrote for the TLF.

Read more articles by Braden Cox.

  • http://dr-flippy.livejournal.com/ Lewis Baumstark

    I’ve heard a lot of conservative and libertarian types bemoaning the Massachusetts/ODF deal and frankly, I still don’t understand what the problem is. It was a market solution. Mass. needed a format that worked for them and they chose accordingly. Other vendors refused to offer the needed features, so they were rightly shut out. Any implication that it was rent-seeking is misleading. The market chose the winners, not the government.

  • http://dr-flippy.livejournal.com/ Lewis Baumstark

    I’ve heard a lot of conservative and libertarian types bemoaning the Massachusetts/ODF deal and frankly, I still don’t understand what the problem is. It was a market solution. Mass. needed a format that worked for them and they chose accordingly. Other vendors refused to offer the needed features, so they were rightly shut out. Any implication that it was rent-seeking is misleading. The market chose the winners, not the government.

  • http://www.techliberation.com/ Tim

    Adobe’s statement concludes by stating that “Adobe welcomes innovation and competition.” Yes, but not to the detriment of its bottom line! And I don’t blame it! However, I do blame state governments that buy into the rhetoric that open standards are good and pure.

    I don’t think this really follows. Open standards are “good and pure” provided that they’re actually open standards. The problem here is that Adobe is attempting to renege on its promise to make PDF an open standard. That’s not the fault of open standards, as such, it’s the fault of Adobe, which is being hypocritical.

  • http://www.blindmindseye.com MikeT

    Braden, this is not the Soviet Union or EU. Mass. is not legislating standards for anyone but the state government. How is that wrong? Why is it wrong for a government to mandate that products meet certain standards if a company wants to sell to them? That’s no different than a corporation requiring documents in certain formats. If Microsoft or others don’t like it, they can stop selling to them.

  • http://www.techliberation.com/ Tim

    Adobe’s statement concludes by stating that “Adobe welcomes innovation and competition.” Yes, but not to the detriment of its bottom line! And I don’t blame it! However, I do blame state governments that buy into the rhetoric that open standards are good and pure.

    I don’t think this really follows. Open standards are “good and pure” provided that they’re actually open standards. The problem here is that Adobe is attempting to renege on its promise to make PDF an open standard. That’s not the fault of open standards, as such, it’s the fault of Adobe, which is being hypocritical.

  • http://www.blindmindseye.com MikeT

    Braden, this is not the Soviet Union or EU. Mass. is not legislating standards for anyone but the state government. How is that wrong? Why is it wrong for a government to mandate that products meet certain standards if a company wants to sell to them? That’s no different than a corporation requiring documents in certain formats. If Microsoft or others don’t like it, they can stop selling to them.

  • http://zgp.org/~dmarti/ Don Marti

    A person should have the freedom to choose whether or not to enter into a contract.

    So people need to be able to fulfil their obligations to communicate with government, such as tax returns and regulatory filings, as well as their legally protected rights to communicate with government, such as Freedom of Information Act requests, without being required to enter into a contract with a company. Any government IT project that mandates that someone accept a software EULA in order to communicate with the government is an unaccountable, “outsourced tax”.

  • http://www.blindmindseye.com MikeT

    Don, that’s precisely why we need open standards. PDF and ODF are open to everyone (except Microsoft, apparently with PDF). You don’t need to enter into a new relationship to get access to PDF documents because there is a lot of free software that fully supports it.

  • dmarti

    A person should have the freedom to choose whether or not to enter into a contract.

    So people need to be able to fulfil their obligations to communicate with government, such as tax returns and regulatory filings, as well as their legally protected rights to communicate with government, such as Freedom of Information Act requests, without being required to enter into a contract with a company. Any government IT project that mandates that someone accept a software EULA in order to communicate with the government is an unaccountable, “outsourced tax”.

  • http://www.blindmindseye.com MikeT

    Don, that’s precisely why we need open standards. PDF and ODF are open to everyone (except Microsoft, apparently with PDF). You don’t need to enter into a new relationship to get access to PDF documents because there is a lot of free software that fully supports it.

  • Braden

    I believe that what Massachusetts did with ODF and PDF is not the result of market mechanisms and other states should not follow its approach. This is not to say that government agencies shouldn’t be concerned about the accessibility and interoperability of public documents. However, Mass.’s decision:

    1) mandates the use not of open standards, but particular open standards; 2) will have significant downstream effects on businesses that interact with the Mass. agencies, on schools and potentially on the average taxpayer; 3) should instead propose a package of goals that allow for compliance from multiple formats, not specific formats per government edict. This is the approach of H.F. No. 3971, a bill introduced in Minnesota that requires state agencies to use open data formats but provides an 8 point definition of “open standard.” By providing a definition, and not selecting specific formats, the MN bill allows the market to innovate within these parameters, not be glued to certain formats.

    And getting back to Adobe and open standards. With its monopoly rhetoric, Adobe is using the specter of an antitrust lawsuit as a threat to Microsoft. As Tim comments, this is Adobe being a bad actor toward a supposed open standard. But I’m trying to introduce a little cynicism here, because I think that too many people put open standards onto a chaste pedestal while ignoring the ugliness involved in the motivation and approval process for the standard.

  • bradencox

    I believe that what Massachusetts did with ODF and PDF is not the result of market mechanisms and other states should not follow its approach. This is not to say that government agencies shouldn’t be concerned about the accessibility and interoperability of public documents. However, Mass.’s decision:

    1) mandates the use not of open standards, but particular open standards;
    2) will have significant downstream effects on businesses that interact with the Mass. agencies, on schools and potentially on the average taxpayer;
    3) should instead propose a package of goals that allow for compliance from multiple formats, not specific formats per government edict. This is the approach of H.F. No. 3971, a bill introduced in Minnesota that requires state agencies to use open data formats but provides an 8 point definition of “open standard.” By providing a definition, and not selecting specific formats, the MN bill allows the market to innovate within these parameters, not be glued to certain formats.

    And getting back to Adobe and open standards. With its monopoly rhetoric, Adobe is using the specter of an antitrust lawsuit as a threat to Microsoft. As Tim comments, this is Adobe being a bad actor toward a supposed open standard. But I’m trying to introduce a little cynicism here, because I think that too many people put open standards onto a chaste pedestal while ignoring the ugliness involved in the motivation and approval process for the standard.

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