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

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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