Martin Schröder wrote: > About gnupdf: It's good that the FSF finally realizes that OSS needs a > free PDF library, but they really should have tried harder to work > with the existing software (poppler/xpdf, Podofo, ...). And I'd prefer > BSD instead of GPLv3.
They're clearly very set in their licensing philisophy, which I find unfortunate. I don't find full-GPL libraries attractive in general, nor do I think they really further the "free software cause" for those who're strong subscribers to it. They're mostly just a pain even for other open source and free software projects. GPLv3 just makes that even harder. I'm personally pretty happy with LGPL, but I would be happy enough with BSD too. I just don't like the way you can only *use* the library if you're developing FSF-flavoured free software. > I wish them good luck, but I won't hold my breath waiting for a release. :-) *if* they can make it work, their approach should result in quite a solid library. Like you, though, I don't think I'll be waiting around. They're going to need a huge amount of developer time and effort to progressively implement the entire PDF 1.7 spec with PDF/X-3 and PDF/A, yet that's only one of the points on their TODO list. PoDoFo definitely has a more haphazard path to PDF implementation, and there are some major downsides to that. Experience suggests, though, that no matter how badly you want to create the perfect app/library/whatever from the start, you're much less likely to succeed than if you do it in small steps. Even if you're really careful about modular design, strong unit testing, etc. You also need a dedicated team of developers, and while the FSF might be able to do that the rest of us folks aren't so lucky :S . -- Craig Ringer ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Podofo-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/podofo-users
