Re: Certification for GNOME apps
- From: Jonathan Blandford <jrb redhat com>
- To: "Ciaran O'Riordan" <ciaran fsfe org>
- Cc: foundation-list gnome org, GNOME Desktop <desktop-devel-list gnome org>
- Subject: Re: Certification for GNOME apps
- Date: 13 Jul 2005 23:13:39 -0400
"Ciaran O'Riordan" <ciaran fsfe org> writes:
> > > Federico Mena Quintero <federico ximian com> writes:
> > > > [...]"certification levels" for GNOME
> > > > [...]ISVs are starting to develop GNOME-ish apps (c.f. Adobe Acrobat
> > > > Reader).
>
> GNOME hackers are working on free software replacements for Acrobat and many
> other pieces of proprietary software.
>
> Telling Adobe how to improve Acrobat makes the job of the Gpdf and Evince
> developers more difficult. (plus other GNOME pdf viewer projects.)
As one of the main evince[1] developers, I feel like I have to reply to
this comment. I don't feel at all that spending time helping Acrobat
improve their product is detrimental to evince at all. In fact, when
Acrobat came out, I was really disappointed at how poor an integration
job they'd done and felt that we really needed to work with them to
improve it.
There are a couple reasons I don't feel threatened by Acroread
* Evince is free software. I personally don't feel that the existence
of non-free software keeps free software from developing. The
benefits of it are too great.
* Poppler isn't able to render every single PDF out there (though we
are getting better!) Having Acroread as a fallback means that users
of Free systems will be able to get work done.
* The Evince team is writing a totally different application than
Acroread. Acroread is a giant, fully-featured pdf viewer that
supports every obscure feature that the PDF spec covers. We aim to
provide a reader that's optimized for reading documents, and covers
the sensible bulk of PDFs. Additionally, we are planning on being
the default 'print preview' feature for GNOME, which is a role
totally unsuited for Acroread.
* I know that our efforts stand on their own, and that in time, users
who know nothing of licensing will pick Evince over Acroread.
* For all we know, Acroread might be Free software someday. I'd love
if it was a great product that they opened up instead of a poor one.
Thanks,
-Jonathan
[1] Which has replaced gpdf
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