By John Oates for The
Register.
This article has been reproduced with permission.
Microsoft associate general counsel Horacio Gutierrez told the
Reg: "We've been discussing this for several weeks,
and of course have been partners for many years, but talks have now
ended. It concerns Office and the "save as" feature. In the end we
agreed to remove the features and make them downloadable by
customers, but Adobe felt this was not enough.
Gutierrez said: "They want us to charge our customers even
though pdf is a royalty-free license - it's free in Star Office, in
Open Office and in Apple, so we'd be the only ones charging for
it.
"We expect a legal letter from them but their position differs
180 degrees from previous public statements."
Adobe gives away the "reader" software needed to view pdf
attachments but likes to charge for products required to create
pdfs. Microsoft's next version of Office promises a pdf-like format
called xps.
Adobe could not be reached by press time.
© The Register
2006
