[free-sklyarov] A constructive form of protest

[Bob La Quey]

Today I had a seemingly simple problem. I got a form for 
a filing with the State of California. They told me that
"the information must be typed with letters in dark contrast
to the paper". Well I have not "typed" on paper in years. 

So they pointed me to a pdf file, which I can download. 
Now though, how do I "type" my data into the form. I am
not about to buy an Adobe product. A search on freshmeat 
and sourceforge reveals a number of efforts, mostly in 
a superficial review, efforts to build libraries but not
too much in simple end use tools. I am a programmer but 
I don't really want to start from libraries to perform
this simple task.

Now this leads me to the real subject. I believe that the
best way to punish Adobe for their actions in getting 
Dmitry jailed is to mount a high profile community  
effort to replace Adobe's flagship products with ones 
that are completely (as in GPL) free. This would also 
send a very strong message to the rest of the DMCA 
corporate backers. I note that this is a constructive 
(literally) form of protest. Moreover is is one that 
an international team of programmers could work upon.
Many of the traditional forms of protest, depending as
they do on physical presence, do not have this quality. 
Perhaps we could use the boycottadobe website as a 
home base. 

So some questions. 

Does anyone out there have a good handle on the existing 
status of free pdf software? 

Second, would any of you be interested in helping to 
organize such a protest/project or joining some existing
project with this intent? 

Finally a personal request. 

Can someone point me to a simple tool for filling out
my pdf form. Preferrably an Open Source/Free tool? 
I would like to start with the existing pdf file,
not from scratch, and just add my text. Command 
line is fine. I don't have to have a gui just the
functionality. Linux is good. 

Please reply offline to this personal appeal. 


Bob La Quey    Free Dmitry http://zork.net/mailman/listinfo/free-sklyarov