Reading more from Andrew Tribute's blog I find some reservations about JDF

http://www.attributes.co.uk/blog/archives/000021.html

Also there is a surprising comment from Frank Romano in this week's Printweek
I have risked a short quote on the WWWatford site.

There is a lot to do to persuade the print industry to support JDF. Whatever Frank Romano thinks about the customers and their ignorance, these are the people who place the orders. In the UK I think it was when the Digital Ad Lab understood how a PDF workflow could help them that the print companies actually invested. They are studying JDF. Maybe all the software companies trying things out should consider print management. They can offer a front end that customers expect, then sort things out for however print companies want to work.