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Talk:Iraq Inquiry

Latest comment: 5 years ago by DavidMCEddy in topic Some reliable sources seem to say that PDF is an open format
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mention Hutton Inquiry?

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Shouldn't this article and the one on the Hutton Inquiry each be modified to mention the other? As noted in the article on the Hutton Inquiry, it "cleared the government of wrongdoing": Isn't it fair to say that this July 2016 report says the conclusions of the Hutton Inquiry were wrong?

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Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

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Some reliable sources seem to say that PDF is an open format

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Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

This comment is based upon this recent version of the article.

The last sentence of (the article, but also the last sentence of) the Criticism section of the article, says:

There were also criticisms that the inquiry's final report had been published electronically only as Portable Document Format files, including images of scans of photocopies of printouts of electronic documents, and not in an open format.

However, according to various sources -- including this Wikipedia article: PDF -- it seems that, since some time that was several years before the Chilcot report was published, the file format called "PDF" has indeed met the requirements to be considered to be an open format.

I even clicked on the link from footnote number "[84]" of (the above mentioned version of) the article, and it appears that, while the article or item linked to -- that is, the item called "What do you mean Chilcot isn't a technology story?" -- at the URL http://tech.newstatesman.com/big-data/tried-searching-chilcot-report-good-luck -- does say some of the things quoted above -- like things about "including images of scans of photocopies of printouts of electronic documents" -- it does NOT exactly say -- (anywhere I saw) -- that the "PDF" file format is NOT an open format.

Hence, perhaps it would be appropriate for that sentence -- the above quoted sentence, which is the last sentence of the Criticism section of [the above-mentioned version of] the article -- to be edited,

  • (a) to not say that the criticism (leveled by the New Statesman article of "7 July 2016", linked to from footnote number "[84]" there) was [even partly] an assertion that the "PDF" file format does not meet the requirements to be considered an open format;
  • (b) to no longer imply that [it's true that] the "PDF" file format is NOT an open format; and/or
  • (c) to more correctly and accurately explain (or, state) what the criticism was, that was leveled by the New Statesman article "What do you mean Chilcot isn't a technology story?", at the tech.newstatesman.com URL mentioned above.

Doing (b) might require (a), and doing (c) might include doing (a).
Also. just doing (a) and (b) might be relatively easy, and IMHO that might be sufficient to achieve (c).

By the way, this might be a situation in which "It's Complicated"; ... [so] I hope that the above is not an over simplification. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 09:43, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

If the term "open format" is defined as "a file format for storing digital data, defined by a published specification usually maintained by a standards organization, and which can be used and implemented by anyone", as claimed in the first line of the Wikipedia article on "open format", then PDF is an "open format": The Wikipedia article on "PDF" says, "In 2008, Adobe published a Public Patent License to ISO 32000-1 granting royalty-free rights for all patents owned by Adobe that are necessary to make, use, sell, and distribute PDF compliant implementations."
There are two other issues about "openness":
  1. The material may be copyrighted. In the US nearly all government documents are in the public domain. That's not true in other countries. Copyright law of the United Kingdom is complicated. I don't know an easy way to determine the copyright status of the Chilcot Inquiry, in particular.
  2. Individuals and organizations that are required by law to publish certain information but don't want it easily available often publish in image format, so it cannot be searched (or otherwise processed by software) without first doing optical character recognition (whether by a human or software).
Hope this helps. DavidMCEddy (talk) 13:40, 11 July 2019 (UTC)Reply
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