Microsoft, Adobe and the Murky World of "RAND"
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For a week now, the IT world has been scratching its collective head over the breakdown of PDF licensing negotiations between Microsoft and Adobe. What was there to breakdown over, if PDF is a standard?
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At issue is why Adobe has allowed OpenOffice.org and Apple to bundle native support for saving documents in PDF format without any economic hooks, but apparently is requiring Microsoft to charge its customers more for Vista if this new release includes the same capabilities - even though PDF is a standard that should be available to all on the same terms.
There are, I think, two logical explanations. One is relatively straightforward, while the other represents a convuluted and little-discussed weakness in the traditional way of creating standards. In this entry, I'll describe both possible explanations, but I'm betting that the convoluted alternative will prove to be the explanation for what is happening here.
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