I've found an old conversation with a lawyer in the context of a due diligence audit, which led to the removal of older versions from SourceForge:
"You currently have iText 2.1.7 and older versions available on SourceForge. While those versions were available under MPL or LGPL, it has come to our attention that some of the code (which has been removed in the 5.0+ versions), cannot be verified as free of possible copyright violations. You took great steps to go through the entire code base and obtain general releases for all code when moving from the LGPL/MPL version to the AGPL version. There is code in older versions (that no longer exists in version 5.0) which could pose indemnity problems for organizations. This is for your information only, we are not directly aware of any situation, only aware of the possibility since no waivers could be obtained from the organization(s) and individual(s) who contributed the code and the actual source of this code could not be identified." In short: people who decide to use iText versions older than version 5+ are taking a risk. Not only are they using outdated software for which support has been discontinued years ago (which makes them look less than professional), it's also possible that they are investing time in software that could cause legal problems. For instance: if you're a start-up, and you decide to use iText without a license, you should have a hard time when you go to a VC for funding, because they'll vet your code and you won't get any money if you aren't able to prove that you're entitled to use iText. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Virtualization & Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/ _______________________________________________ iText-questions mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions iText(R) is a registered trademark of 1T3XT BVBA. Many questions posted to this list can (and will) be answered with a reference to the iText book: http://www.itextpdf.com/book/ Please check the keywords list before you ask for examples: http://itextpdf.com/themes/keywords.php
