Why Microsoft should sue Adobe

June 5, 2006 — Leave a comment

This is a really, really good question, from iTWire:

Microsoft has born the brunt of criticism for its massive domination of the computer desktop since the release of Windows 95. For once, however, it is not Microsoft that has some explaining to do. Microsoft’s decision not to include the ability to save files to Adobe’s PDF format in its upcoming Office 2007 product, after arguments with Adobe, is bad news for users. Adobe really needs to explain to the world why it has forced Microsoft to do this.

At present, both Microsoft’s open source office suite rival, Open Office.org 2.0, as well as Apple’s Mac OSX operating system, provide the facility to save documents as PDF (Portable Document Format) files. The PDF has become a widely used defacto standard for publishing non editable paginated documents. An argument could be made that excluding the same facility from Office 2007 that is provided freely elsewhere is unfair discrimination.