My government is software-stupid

Posted by scrubs on Nov 3, 2012 1:01 PM EDT
Free Software Magazine; By Bob Mesibov 		Mail this story
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I just checked, and my State government's website here in Australia has 43 pages with the message that Adobe Acrobat Reader is needed if I want to view the page's downloadable PDFs. One variant of the message is This a Portable Document Format (PDF) file and requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader. The Reader is easy to download and is free of charge. The link takes you to a download page at adobe.com. Another variant is To view these forms you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader. There are a lot of PDF viewers other than Acrobat Reader, and they're just as free. Safari and Google Chrome browsers even have built-in PDF viewers. So why is my government telling fibs? Does it create its PDFs with Adobe Acrobat software, and does its product licence require it to recommend Acrobat Reader when making those PDFs publicly available? Or is my government just software-stupid?

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Australian Governments are Microsoft locked. Ridcully 8 2,021 Nov 4, 2012 4:46 PM

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