TIFF/A by any other name

TIFF/A is in search of a new name.

Today’s online kickoff discussion for the TIFF/A Initiative was productive in a lot of ways, but the big news for the broader public is that it will have to change its name. Adobe owns the TIFF trademark, and it doesn’t want “TIFF/A” used for the proposed new standard for archival TIFF.

This is a bit odd, since Adobe has approved “PDF/A” for archival PDF, which is similarly a subset of PDF recommended for archival purposes, and since there’s already TIFF slash (no, I don’t mean fanfic!) such as TIFF/FX, TIFF/EP, and TIFF/IT. Maybe the difference is that Adobe still actively maintains PDF but hasn’t done anything with the TIFF standard since the twentieth century. I didn’t get the impression that Adobe is hostile to the initiative, just to the name. Whatever the reason, a new name is probably coming.