Unprintable (locked?) PDF

James Kosin jkosin at beta.intcomgrp.com
Wed Jun 28 18:44:25 UTC 2006


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Mike McCarty wrote:
> Would someone who knows please enlighten me as to why it is
> one could not modify an open-source program which can view
> PDF files  which are "encrypted" and which are marked as not
> printable to ignore the "no print" specification? Specifically,
> is the GNOME PDF viewer open source? If so, then what prevents
> one from modifying it to ignore the "no print" lock? If a
> specific license is required for opening/using PDF files, then
> how can there be open source programs which can read it?
>
> If the GNOME PDF viewer is not open source, then how is it
> distributed all over the Linux world? I understand that PDF
> is an open standard, but the Wikipedia also says it is
> proprietary. How can an open standard be proprietary?
>
> Mike
A standard is proprietary when a company has patents on the standard.
And they can be public (open source) if the distributor (Adobe) in
this case agrees to distribute it freely.  The modification of open
source is OK, but not when a process itself is patented, in that case
only the holder of the patent can change the behavior of a feature or
requirement for their process.

Java is heading in that direction also.....

Just my comments.
- -James

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