-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Mike McCarty wrote: > Would someone who knows please enlighten me as to why it is > one could not modify an open-source program which can view > PDF files which are "encrypted" and which are marked as not > printable to ignore the "no print" specification? Specifically, > is the GNOME PDF viewer open source? If so, then what prevents > one from modifying it to ignore the "no print" lock? If a > specific license is required for opening/using PDF files, then > how can there be open source programs which can read it? > > If the GNOME PDF viewer is not open source, then how is it > distributed all over the Linux world? I understand that PDF > is an open standard, but the Wikipedia also says it is > proprietary. How can an open standard be proprietary? > > Mike A standard is proprietary when a company has patents on the standard. And they can be public (open source) if the distributor (Adobe) in this case agrees to distribute it freely. The modification of open source is OK, but not when a process itself is patented, in that case only the holder of the patent can change the behavior of a feature or requirement for their process. Java is heading in that direction also..... Just my comments. - -James -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFEos4JkNLDmnu1kSkRArwcAJ9qTTs+4YZaNS2IMKG23w+KPoTDIgCfcQsn heb8J0Zbfxc85I5Tw7F63/M= =r9Jk -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Scanned by ClamAV - http://www.clamav.net
