this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
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AssholeDesign
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I vaguely remember (but can't find it right now) that the PDF format became open source at some point and free alternatives came out for PDF editing. And that was already back in the 2000s when people still printed documents (which is what PDF was originally meant for).
In modern times, every browser/OS can read PDF, every text editor can export to PDF, nobody prints physical documents and there are free alternatives – so why do they still exist and who is paying?
If you have a business like a law firm where it is VERY IMPORTANT that a PDF has certain qualities, free tools for PDF creation can be a big gamble, especially if you have to open a PDF that someone else has created and do changes to it. And the cost is pretty trivial compared to the cost of messing up.