Can you recommend a good iText replacement?

[Dean Del Ponte-2]

I need to add some PDF generation/manipulation functionality to my Grails app.

I had used iText years ago and loved it.

It appears that iText has changed the license to the Alfero GPL which isn't business friendly and their commercial licensing is unappealing.

Has anyone had a good experience with PDF libraries similar to iText?

Any recommendations?

I'm looking for a library that can append multiple PDFs together and apply the same footer to each.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Dean Del Ponte

[tomas lin]

PDFBox has a merge and overlay functionality - http://pdfbox.apache.org/

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 10:29 PM, Dean Del Ponte
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> I need to add some PDF generation/manipulation functionality to my Grails
> app.
>
> I had used iText years ago and loved it.
>
> It appears that iText has changed the license to the Alfero GPL which isn't
> business friendly and their commercial licensing is unappealing.
>
> Has anyone had a good experience with PDF libraries similar to iText?
>
> Any recommendations?
>
> I'm looking for a library that can append multiple PDFs together and apply
> the same footer to each.
>
> Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
>
> Dean Del Ponte

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[Sebastian Gozin]

I don't really see how the Affero license is less business friendly than the previous one. Surely providing a download link if you modified itext is trivial?
If you didn't modify it... which I suspect you didn't. Then nothing has changed.

On 29 May 2012, at 23:29, Dean Del Ponte wrote:

> I need to add some PDF generation/manipulation functionality to my Grails app.
>
> I had used iText years ago and loved it.
>
> It appears that iText has changed the license to the Alfero GPL which isn't business friendly and their commercial licensing is unappealing.
>
> Has anyone had a good experience with PDF libraries similar to iText?
>
> Any recommendations?
>
> I'm looking for a library that can append multiple PDFs together and apply the same footer to each.
>
> Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
>
> Dean Del Ponte

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[burtbeckwith]

AGPL requires that you make your website code available even if you don't modify the library code. Not business friendly at all.

Burt

Sebastian Gozin wrote

I don't really see how the Affero license is less business friendly than the previous one. Surely providing a download link if you modified itext is trivial?
If you didn't modify it... which I suspect you didn't. Then nothing has changed.

[potter_ru]

Dean Del Ponte-2 wrote

...
It appears that iText has changed the license to the Alfero GPL which isn't
business friendly and their commercial licensing is unappealing.
...

The last MPL/LGPL version of the source is iText 4.20, here:
http://itext.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/itext/tags/iText_4_2_0/

IIRC, this version can be used for appending multiple PDFs together.

[Sebastian Gozin]

I didn't get that impression when reading http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html at all.
The wording they use appears to cover the item covered by the license and nothing beyond that.

Specifically...

The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community. It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version.

The modified version in my mind refers to itext and not the application interfacing with itext. Unless using a library is suddenly considered modifying it...


On 31 May 2012, at 18:30, burtbeckwith wrote:

> AGPL requires that you make your website code available even if you don't
> modify the library code. Not business friendly at all.
>
> Burt
>
>
> Sebastian Gozin wrote
>>
>> I don't really see how the Affero license is less business friendly than
>> the previous one. Surely providing a download link if you modified itext
>> is trivial?
>> If you didn't modify it... which I suspect you didn't. Then nothing has
>> changed.
>>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://grails.1312388.n4.nabble.com/Can-you-recommend-a-good-iText-replacement-tp4629170p4629327.html
> Sent from the Grails - user mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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[marc.esher]

I used PDFLib (pdflib.com) for years when working in the financial services industry. At 2200 bucks, it's pricey, but for me it was always well worth it.

[burtbeckwith]

See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html

The iText site describes the problem, see http://itextpdf.com/terms-of-use/

Burt

<quote author="Sebastian Gozin">
I didn't get that impression when reading http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html at all.
The wording they use appears to cover the item covered by the license and nothing beyond that.

Specifically...

The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community. It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version.

The modified version in my mind refers to itext and not the application interfacing with itext. Unless using a library is suddenly considered modifying it...


On 31 May 2012, at 18:30, burtbeckwith wrote:

> AGPL requires that you make your website code available even if you don't
> modify the library code. Not business friendly at all.
>
> Burt

[Dean Del Ponte-2]

Thanks everyone for your responses!

I ended up going with an older version of iText not covered by the AGPL as recommended by potter_ru.

- Dean Del Ponte

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 1:04 PM, burtbeckwith <[hidden email]> wrote:

See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-affero-gpl.html

The iText site describes the problem, see http://itextpdf.com/terms-of-use/

Burt

I didn't get that impression when reading
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html at all.
The wording they use appears to cover the item covered by the license and
nothing beyond that.

Specifically...

The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure
that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the
community. It requires the operator of a network server to provide the
source code of the modified version running there to the users of that
server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly
accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the
modified version.

The modified version in my mind refers to itext and not the application
interfacing with itext. Unless using a library is suddenly considered
modifying it...


On 31 May 2012, at 18:30, burtbeckwith wrote:

> AGPL requires that you make your website code available even if you don't
> modify the library code. Not business friendly at all.
>
> Burt

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Sent from the Grails - user mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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