Markus: Thanks for your note. To respond:
1) The change in license was posted on this list. In fact, several messages warned of its upcoming change. And the license change has been discussed several times since it was made in December. If you go to the 1t3xt.com website, where iText has been located for several years, the first thing you see is: "iText PDF AGPL Java-PDF library" If you go to lowagie.com and click on "iText Home Page," you see the same thing. For most users, having the AGPL aspect highlighted and bold as the first line of text on the project's home page is pretty clear. Nothing "hidden" or "shady" as you call it. It's all been out in the open. 2) "There is no indication of the price of the license on the website." All you need to do is send a request to [email protected]. That's the commercial arm for iText. This too has been posted several times on the mailing list. 3) " iText is putting itself in direct competition with e.g. PDFlib (=> www.pdflib.com), which can be had transparently for about $1,100 (server license) and has lots of additional features." iText competes with all PDF libraries, open source and commercial. It offers advantages and benefits not found in the other libraries. PDFlib is not free (except for evaluation, personal, and academic use) and not open source. Feel free to choose PDFlib if it better suits your purposes. 4) Lack of response from the developers: You and I exchanged emails on 14 October 2009 about your project. I contacted Bruno on your behalf and personally mailed you his reply. I then gave you a list of possibly interested freelancers. Your last email was to thank me for this help. I am not sure why you think that the developers of an OSS library are obliged to accept your offers to pay them for development of features you want. But you certainly cannot say that you did not receive any response. You did. I have the emails. 5) Of course, the developers accept patches. Patches are submitted all the time as are requests and fixes. These are copiously documented in the change lists of each release. Feel free to post other concerns. ---A. Binstock / for itextsofware.com >>> re >>> Markus Meyer wrote: > > Am 16.02.2010 20:04, schrieb Brett Neumeier: >> Yes, absolutely!! My question, in my previous email and in this one, >> is: what is the text in the AGPL that causes it to operate in the way >> that you assert that it does? >> >> > Moreover, there are some more points to consider. > > First, it seems that the license switch to AGPL (i.e. a "viral" license) > was made very silent. I have used iText a lot over the last years and > although I always tried to update to the latest version and often > visited the iText website I did not notice the license change until I > read this mailing list thread (note that this itself is accidentially, I > just happened to be subscribed to the mailing list at the moment because > I submitted a patch some weeks ago and never got around to unsubscribe > after no one bothered to even answer my patch submission). I just > downloaded iText-src-2.1.7.zip to verify it still is LGPL (since that's > what we're using at the moment) and, guess what, it does not even > contain a LICENSE.TXT or something at all! I also downloaded > iText-src-5.0.1.zip and it does not contain any licensing information > either. So all of this is very shady. > > > Second, I had tried to contact the iText developers in the past about > adding some functionality to iText and requested an offer. My experience > was really disappointing. Although I emailed with some persons several > times I never really got a quote. Infact, although I specifically > requested it, I never got an actual email of Bruno Lowagie (who seems to > be the "mastermind" of iText after all). So I'm not sure whether iText > BVBA (or iText Software Corp. or whatever it's called now) will live up > to their own new expectations of being a "commercial" software company. > There is also no indication on the website about the price of the > "commercial" license. With this license change, iText is putting itself > in direct competition with e.g. PDFlib (=> www.pdflib.com), which can be > had transparently for about $1,100 (server license) and has lots of > additional features. > > Third, I don't know about the development process of iText, but did the > iText developers accept any patches from any third party? If yes, have > all third parties agreed to the license change? If not, on what grounds > can the license change be performed? > > All in all, it seems to me that someone is in desperate need of money > here but did not think about the consequences. > > > Markus > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > SOLARIS 10 is the OS for Data Centers - provides features such as DTrace, > Predictive Self Healing and Award Winning ZFS. Get Solaris 10 NOW > http://p.sf.net/sfu/solaris-dev2dev > _______________________________________________ > iText-questions mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions > > Buy the iText book: http://www.1t3xt.com/docs/book.php > Check the site with examples before you ask questions: > http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/ > You can also search the keywords list: > http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/ > > -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Licensing-questions-tp27161755p27617405.html Sent from the iText - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SOLARIS 10 is the OS for Data Centers - provides features such as DTrace, Predictive Self Healing and Award Winning ZFS. Get Solaris 10 NOW http://p.sf.net/sfu/solaris-dev2dev _______________________________________________ iText-questions mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions Buy the iText book: http://www.1t3xt.com/docs/book.php Check the site with examples before you ask questions: http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/ You can also search the keywords list: http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/
