Adobe Is Bad for Open Government

Adobe, in their “open government” whitepaper (which, of course, is a PDF):

Since the advent of the web, an entire infrastructure has evolved to enable public access to information. Such technologies include HTML, Adobe PDF, and Adobe® Flash® technology.

Clay Johnson responds:

This is nonsense. The fact is, sticking to open, standards based technologies like HTML, XML, JSON and others are far more important and useful in getting your information out to the public than the proprietary formats of Adobe. Here’s a hint — if the data format has an “®” by its name, it probably isn’t great for transparency or open data.

★ Monday, 2 November 2009