Friday, January 14, 2011

The .wwf format in practice

This week I promised myself to put the .wwf format to the test. So, I sent a .wwf file to my girlfriend at work and I distributed all documents at work that I didn't find worth printing in the .wwf format. These were the reactions I got:
  1. My girlfriend wasn't even able to open it, because the MIME-type wasn't known in her Vista installation.
  2. I p*ssed off a very expensive consultant at work who ordered me to send a printable version or I'd have to look for another assignment.
  3. A colleague of mine who prints virtually everything sent it to another nerd colleague of mine who returned a printable version of the document using my "cracking" pages.
I asked them whether they had become more "aware" of the issue at hand. Most thought it was merely a nuisance, others said they would never donate a dime to the WWF anymore.

Update: For some reason unknown, WWF Italy is now collaborating with forest managers to "develop awareness on the issues of sustainable management of forest resources" and "promote (..) the purchase of forest products"!

Update: As I predicted, the WWF violates FOSS licenses.

Update: The WWF have promised to comply to the "Skim" BSD license. As always, I'm not holding my breath. Even with a buglist the size of your arm, their Windows driver is still the same old v1.03 Release Candidate.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Though I can understand their sentiment, I don't think creating a 'new' file format is the way to go.

Maybe a new 'reader' that doesn't let you print, or maybe negotiating with various companies to have no-print policies in place.

The last place I worked some people would print e-mails so they could bring them over to show me - rather than forwarding them. There was nothing 'private' or 'secret' about the information (in terms of my job I was allowed to look at anything pertinent to my responsibilities).

Often I would point out to people that they should not be printing out such things and the response was usually positive - though there were a few luddites :))

Some said it was easier to read - until I showed them how to resize the font on screen so it was easier still!

All up though, it would appear WWF had an idea which required more thought and discussion. Someone obviously had the authority to make the decision to proceed with this but not the wisdom to think it through or seek other opinions.