Markus Meyer wrote: > Changing the license from MPL/LGPL to AGPL is a big change for the user. > It needs direct response from any project, be it open or closed source. > For example no open source project which currently uses iText 2.1.7 will > be able to use iText 5.0.0 without completely changing its licensing > model.
That's not true. The Free Software Foundation has been discouraging the use of the LGPL a long time ago: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html The AGPL is compatible with GPLv3 and other AGPL libraries. The LGPL for iText was becoming an anachronism. > It's like selling a car > with the gas and brake pedals swapped and blaming the user because he > could have read the manual. There are companies that have bought a license BEFORE the change from LGPL to AGPL because they didn't think it was a good business model for them to create a money making business that depended on software for which they didn't pay. They don't experience any problems due to the license change. Suppose that somebody starts up a business selling tweets from Twitter, and then complain to the owners of Twitter if they limit the number of tweet requests. Who would you side with? The person trying to make money on the back of Twitter, or the people at Twitter who are forced to limit the number of requests because the server load gets too high? On a personal note: I've spent a year in the hospital with my son who had bone cancer (he was diagnosed in February 2008; I still remember who my world fell apart). During that year, it became very clear to me that it had become impossible to run a project like iText for free. If you think otherwise, I'd like to go back in time and switch places with you. Sounds *bitter*, but that's because your reaction makes me feel *bitter*. You shouldn't judge on people and their decisions if you don't know them or the reasons that brought them to their decisions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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/
