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Comment on Tell HN: Adobe took down the PDF 1.7 specification from their site

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The ISO released the 2.0 version of the specification that replaces the 1.7 standard.

"Although it is an open standard, one major difference compared with prior versions of PDF is that ISO now holds the copyright to the PDF specification and thus PDF 2.0 is not freely downloadable." [0]

It looks like DMCA requests are being issued to anyone that hosted the old specification, even open source projects [1].

[0] https://www.pdfa.org/resource/iso-32000-pdf/ [1] https://github.com/Hopding/pdf-lib#git-history-rewrite

Wow, I feel like that is a step back. This feels a lot like other protocols non free specs like J1939 that is over $1000USD.

PDF 2.0 is not cheap either: https://www.iso.org/standard/75839.html Definitely a step back.

Why are these documents a paid product? Are there other ways to access it? I figured standardization documentation would be free to encourage adoption.

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