FSFE Launches Free PDF Readers Campaign

FSFE Fellow writes "The Fellowship of the Free Software Foundation Europe is proud to announce its latest initiative: pdfreaders.org, a site providing information about PDF with links to Free Software PDF readers for all major operating systems. FSFE president Georg Greve says: 'Interoperability, competition and choice are primary benefits of Open Standards that translate into vendor-independence and better value for money for customers. Although many versions of PDF offer all these benefits for formatted text and documents, files in PDF formats typically come with information that users need to use a specific product. pdfreaders.org provides an alternative to highlight the strengths of PDF as an Open Standard.'"

Comments

List in TFA seems to have it covered

[MichaelSmith]

...so is the Free PDF readers campaign over now?

Re:List in TFA seems to have it covered

[xtracto]

But because Free readers exist for most platforms you are Free to add those features if you wish.
LOL

Thank you, you just reinforced the point I just made in another thread :)

Re:List in TFA seems to have it covered

[TooMuchToDo]

1) You should write up a HOWTO regarding implementing missing features. Reducing barriers to entry is key in FOSS.

2) What do you use for your website? Wordpress? Joomla? I dig it, and was just curious.

What? No Foxit?

[BikeHelmet]

What - no Foxit?

Most Windows users couldn't care less about using "shareware" software vs freeware. Evidence: WinRAR

The gaudy interfaces of most FOSS software(like Sumatra) will frighten most sheeple away. Windows users expect complete programs with lots of features, rather than simplistic single-purpose designs.

Okular looks good though - just different - but I'd still opt for Foxit for most people simply because of the presentation... it's good enough that nobody will question where Adobe Reader went.

Highlight security instead

[spazimodo]

Pretty much every virus infected PC I've seen in the past few months was originally infected via the magnificence that is Acrobat Reader (and most of the remainder were infected by the meth-using-crack-whore that is the Sun JRE)

The time is right to go after Acrobat. After explaining to someone that the virus that just trashed their PC (or office's PCs) came in by way of a hidden PDF in an infected web page, not only are they OK with removing the Acrobat browser plugins, but they're often open to getting Acrobat off the machine entirely.

Given the rash of shit that Microsoft has (rightfully) received over the years for browser exploits, it's time to hold Adobe and Sun accountable for their dangerously insecure products. Both companies patch management is terrible. Neither provide any decent support for sysadmins to push out updates ("uh, try to find the MSI that the installer drops and then, you know, push it out with something. I think you can do it with Group Policies!" is about as far as they go) For Java it's been easy to say "just get rid of it" since for 99% of people it's unnecessary, but Acrobat and Acrobat Reader have been more of a challenge. Perhaps highlighting how insecure Acrobat is will help move the effort to replace it along.

Re:Highlight security instead

[Kozz]

Pretty much every virus infected PC I've seen in the past few months was originally infected via the magnificence that is Acrobat Reader ... by way of a hidden PDF in an infected web page.

That's spot-on. I'm like much of the Slashdot crowd (or so I suppose): using the Internet since well before the turn of the millenium, tried all kinds of OSs, a bit of a hardware geek, etc. Yet I was casually surfing along with my work laptop (yay, with McAfee Enterprise)on some humor/satire related website when everything in my browser froze up. The moment the browser recovered, I was told there was an error in acrobat.exe; the next three minutes were a blur of virus/trojans/backdoor alerts from McAfee. I unplugged the ether and shut it down. In the end it was easier to nuke the HDD than to attempt any kind of recovery whatsoever.

Re:Highlight security instead

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to call bullshit on this...
"Pretty much every virus infected PC I've seen in the past few months was originally infected via the magnificence that is Acrobat Reader"

Please do explain how you determined it was the PDF viewer...

I've never seen a PC infected by Acrobat Reader. I have seen dumb-asses that download a lot of "free" software that invested the systems, wiped data, FUCKED UP THE USERS LIFE...but have never seen Adobe release any reader that can infect apc by viewing a PDF. For that matter, did the PC have any, ANY protection on it at all????

(I have in excess of twenty years in IT, and currently I do forensics...I do have a clue, so please explain the method you used to make such a claim)

PDF Reader on Mac OS X?

[Yvan256]

Unless you haven't used a (somewhat recent) Mac recently, you'd know that you don't need a PDF reader on Mac OS X. The OS itself can open, print and print to PDF directly.

On OS X 10.5, if I press [Space] while I have a PDF document selected in Finder it displays it nearly instantly.

So unless I'm missing something obvious, installing a PDF reader on Mac OS X seems pointless to me.

Re:PDF Reader on Mac OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the ability to Quick Look PDFs and Preview does work just fine as a PDF reader... and yet I usually use Skim for my PDF reading needs. Why? Because I read academic papers constantly (at least one, usually more a day). The ability to easily highlight the text while I read is essential and Preview just isn't good enough. The highlighter is a tool rather than an operation and highlighting can be selected and removed. After a single page, the difference will be obvious...

FOSS FUD?

[artor3]

Other proprietary alternatives to Adobe's PDF reader also exist, but like it, their internal working is a a trade secret and these programs do not respect your right to control your own privacy and data.

A tad melodramatic, isn't it? Ooh, scary secret internal workings... I don't think this is going to increase adoption rates of FOSS PDF readers one bit, and for one simple reason.

No one cares. Sure, maybe a few people do, but the VAST majority of people really couldn't care less if their PDF reader is free as in speech, so long as its free as in beer. They're gonna google "free pdf reader", find Adobe's and use that. Or, if they really don't like Adobe (who could blame them?), they'll see Foxit next on the list, and use that.

If you want to get people to switch, you need your product to be substantially superior in terms of features, not philosophy. Packaging it with something people already have would also be a good method. If there was a PDF reader good enough to be packaged with OOo, that'd be a start.

*Yeah, I know I'll probably get modded down for daring to use FOSS and FUD in the same breath, but come on! That description was so over the top*

Re:FOSS FUD?

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed one interesting thing from the wikipedia article on Sumatra PDF:

Sumatra 0.5 and earlier versions can print PDFs that have disallowed printing. This feature has been removed from the newer versions.

This sounds like a step backwards. Why would I want my PDF reader to refuse to print something for me? At least the source code is available - hopefully someone will fork it to fix this bug.

Re:FOSS FUD?

[solferino]

See Spazimodo's comment above for the security risks involved in using Adobe's proprietary comment.

The argument you're making - that ppl will switch for pragmatic rather than philosophical reasons - is an old one. The free software community will counter with the argument that their philosophical reasons are entirely pragmatic. Ours is simply more long term pragmatic thinking. The benefits of the founding of the Free Software Foundation 25 years ago are increasingly showing manifest benefits today. Why do you have an issue with people expressing broader and longer term thinking?

IRS tax forms

[coryking]

That is the first that comes to mind. Validation on forms. See also: Your IRS 1040