On the 29th January Adobe announced it will be seeking ISO certification for the PDF 1.7 standard. Up until this point many vendors have been able to implement the PDF standard based solely on trust that Adobe will not significantly change the format and break their respective implementations. If PDF gains ISO certification then this will ensure any vendor can develop for and use the standard in the knowledge that it will not change and be 100% interoperable with other implementations of the same standard.
This is good news for governments and business as it means once certified PDF will become a permanent, unencumbered format. These characteristics will enable organisations to use PDF as an archiving medium for 2-dimensional digital documents with the confidence that no single company can dictate or control the use of the format. This is important because in the past companies like Microsoft have unduly effected the industry with their monopolistic control over formats (as evidenced by the infamous Halloween Memo).
