I have gotten a few e-mails and an article on a rumor (even though there is a Microsoft press release to this effect it is still a rumor) that Adobe will sue Microsoft over the inclusion of the "Save As PDF" feature in Office 2007. Although the details are fairly sketchy it appears that Microsoft expects they will be sued if they include the functionality or give it away for free. The articles I have seen only mention the ability to save a document as a PDF. While Adobe sells something to do this so including it would cut their revenue I can't see this as the only issue since other word processing programs include the ability to save as a PDF. The format is open and although I am not a lawyer it appears that anyone can use the standard to create PDF documents. Even if the sticking point is that Microsoft sells office and therefore gets money from PDF it doesn't seem to hold when you realize that Word Perfect also costs money and allows you to save to a PDF. I think there is something deeper going on here.

I don't understand the problem since the PDF format is well documented and any number of people have created printer drivers or components for creating PDF documents. I support Adobe's ability to make money off of their standard but it seems to me that if the whole problem is over the ability to save as PDF without charging a license fee then Adobe needs to be fair and charge everyone the same amount. That means Microsoft, Corel, and anyone writing a component to save to PDF would pay the same amount for licensing. If not then someone shoud be suing Adobe for unfair business practices.

Whatever happens I hope that Microsoft and Adobe come to some reasonable agreement. I already have to go out and download Acrobat reader when I set up a new machine because a lot of the documents I get are in PDF format. I would hate to have to get another download to be able to create them, and yet another download to be able to index them in SharePoint and yet another download to be able to .... (you get the idea)