Hello PoDoFo users,
I think it's time already for a quick update on the status of the dual
licensing operation. Here is the list of people (most likely) holding
some copyrights on the library code:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1o6XRJowO_6nBnYZcgqu6YYp_UNS9x2qzYGUSMna6BXU/edit?usp=sharing
So far ~40% of the people answered positively to the request.
Excluding me and Dominick it's 6 people that promptly answered in the
first 24 hours. All the yellow marked people were sent an email to an
address that didn't bounce with errors (you can find attached the
template that was used for the email). Some may be dormant recipients,
but let's wait a bit before sending reminders or try to find other
addresses.
We also have a couple of missing contacts:
- Reinhard Mitteregger: the old email address is deactivated was on
the domain on Michelic&Partner, a company that should be closed now.
Waiting for connection by other means;
- Palmer Zent: this case is more interesting. The old email was a
deactivated @gmail.com address, and so it is his user "pzent" on
sourceforge. The only relevant matches for this user are related to
PoDoFo. I don't want to speculate, so I will simply ask: do you know
him/can you provide a contact (also privately)?
As a last note: Dominik doesn't have any statistics related to this ML
as they are not available anymore in SF.net, and recently it has been
quite silent. There may be no more than 10 people still reading it,
who knows? If you have something to say, please do :) .
Cheers,
Francesco
On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 at 00:49, Francesco Pretto <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Dear PoDoFo users/maintainers,
>
> I just wanted to inform you that, together with Dominik, we resumed
> the effort begun in 2022 to dual license[1] the PoDoFo code to
> LGPL2+/MPL-2.0. We have identified around 20 people who most likely
> hold some copyright on the library code. Other contributors' code got
> rewritten, or their contributions were too small. We will disclose
> more about the process once it is at a more advanced stage.
>
> Anyone on the copyright holders list will soon receive an email.
> Please understand if the tone is a bit formal and impersonal.
>
> Cheers,
> Francesco
>
> [1] https://sourceforge.net/p/podofo/mailman/message/37746122/
Subject: Request for permission to dual-license your PoDoFo
contributions (LGPL-2+/MPL-2.0)
Dear <contributor>,
We are contacting you because you previously contributed to
the PoDoFo[1] library.
Following a discussion that began in February 2022, the PoDoFo
project decided in December 2022[2] to migrate its entire library
code base to a dual-licensing model under the GNU Lesser
General Public License version 2 or later (LGPL-2+, the current
license) and the Mozilla Public License version 2.0[3] (MPL-2.0).
The main motivation for this change was to provide the library
in licensing terms that are more business-friendly in certain
deployment scenarios, while still maintaining the copyleft
requirement as in LGPL.
After the release of PoDoFo 1.0 last year, we were able to review
the project's contribution history in order to identify all
copyright holders. This process identified the attached list
("commits_<contributor>.txt") of Git revisions authored by you.
We kindly ask you to review these contributions and, if you agree,
grant permission to re-license your library code under the above
mentioned LGPL-2+/MPL-2.0 dual-license terms. If you contributed
any PoDoFo tools or tests code we ask you:
- Tools: the permission to dual-license your contributions
GPL-2+/MPL-2.0 (current is GPL-2+)
- Tests: the permission to single license your contributions
to MIT-0[4] (current is GPL-2+)
You can reply by returning the following snippet:
------------------------------
I, <contributor>, hereby grant permission to Dominik Seichter and Francesco
Pretto, representing the PoDoFo project, to re-license all of my contributions
to the PoDoFo repository (https://github.com/podofo/podofo) for which I am
eligible to claim copyright, up to and including revision
5330728ad30ee12ecd5d1c86f464bd20eb3679d8 (dated December 9, 2022), under the:
- LGPL-2+ / MPL-2.0 dual-licensing terms, for library code residing in the
"src/" directory
- GPL-2+ / MPL-2.0 dual-licensing terms, for tools code residing in the
"tools/" directory
- MIT-0 licensing terms, for test code residing in the "test/" directory
------------------------------
We would greatly appreciate a prompt response. If you have any
questions, concerns, or objections, please do not hesitate to
to contact us by email.
[1] https://github.com/podofo/podofo
[2] https://sourceforge.net/p/podofo/mailman/message/37746122/
[3] https://opensource.org/license/mpl-2-0
[4] https://opensource.org/license/mit-0
Kind regards,
Francesco Pretto
Dominik Seichter_______________________________________________
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