Amid threats of a lawsuit from Adobe, Microsoft acknowledged Friday that it would remove support for saving files in PDF from Office 2007, as well as dropping its own rival format XPS from the productivity suite and Windows Vista.
The changes follow a breakdown of talks between the two technology giants after Microsoft announced last year it would include native PDF publishing with the release of Office 2007. The feature has long been a top request from customers, the company said at the time, and other office suites have the capability.
But Adobe was unhappy with the move and a dispute has been brewing for four months, Microsoft's lead counsel Brad Smith said Friday. Although PDF claims to be an open format and is integrated into OpenOffice and Apple's Mac OS X operating system, Adobe apparently sees Office 2007 as a real threat to its business.
News source: BetaNews
The changes follow a breakdown of talks between the two technology giants after Microsoft announced last year it would include native PDF publishing with the release of Office 2007. The feature has long been a top request from customers, the company said at the time, and other office suites have the capability.
But Adobe was unhappy with the move and a dispute has been brewing for four months, Microsoft's lead counsel Brad Smith said Friday. Although PDF claims to be an open format and is integrated into OpenOffice and Apple's Mac OS X operating system, Adobe apparently sees Office 2007 as a real threat to its business.
News source: BetaNews
The point isn't how big you can type, or the if the functionality will become available to Office 2007 users. It's about how any company can force another company to NOT use an open source format.
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