Mailinglist mails on itext-questions
Sometimes we receive things like:
Dear all, Fedora packagers have one big problem. The code is licensing on AGPL for all this project? regards
By Gossling, they have only 1 big problem, they are lucky !
How do we react to that… saying yes it’s AGPL. And saying they are lucky to have only one problem. The problem isn’t even explained.
Do I care that Fedora packagers have problem? no not really. I even wonder why the hell they want to package iText® in a linux distro. It’s a Java library, application deployers/developers add it to their lib folder or application server library folder, (or even add it through OSGI now). I’ve never used in linux distro embeded java libraries. I add them myself (preferably with maven) then I know what has been added.
To further complicate matters, I was able to view my old original files on a Win2000 machine using Adobe Acrobat 4.0 reader and everything was FINE in that version! Was shocked, since I spent past couple days totally retyping the content which is INVISIBLE when I view the older files using Adobe Reader 6.0.
Am very confused now. Have an older version of my project that nobody will be able to read unless they’re using the archaic Adobe Reader 4.0 or earlier! And have my newly typed version which is a mass of INDIVIDUAL PAGES created in Open Office and exported into PDF format as INDIVIDUAL PAGES, but have found no way to MERGE these pages into one large PDF file that can be read by a current version of Adobe Reader. If anybody has any ideas/suggestions, on how to make either version of my project actually READABLE, would welcome your help!
P.S. I’m thinking that there must be something on one of my PDF pages in the original Acrobat-generated file that is tripping up the newer Adobe Reader, but that the older Acrobat 4.0 Reader has no problem rendering. Have been trying to find what it might be, but no luck so far.
Again, try the iText mailinglist…
Dear Friends,
Please forgive this uninformed newbie question; I realize I’m out of my league here. But I need some help and hope you can advise. I had a complicate ebook project that somehow got messed up by Adobe Acrobat (still a mystery how it happened, but most of the content got deleted from the project). So I painstakingly retyped all the content into Open Office program and exported each page individually as a .PDF file, as I went, thinking I could use my old Adobe Acrobat 4.0 to “merge” all the individual pages into one big PDF document (ebook), once I got all the individual pages completed.
Well, surprise, surprise! That’s not happening. Neither Adobe Acrobat 4.0 nor the Open Office seems to know how to merge all my individual pages into one large document (PDF) file. Adobe gives me an error message: “These documents contain subset fonts that have the same name and cannot be merged.” I don’t understand what that means, but Adobe then goes on to complain, “This file contains information not understood by the viewer.” So apparently my old Adobe Acrobat 4.0 will never know how to merge these files.
Can someone here please tell me if the itext program can do what I need, and if it can help solve this dilemma, what system requirements are needed and what technical knowhow I need in order to use itext to merge my individual PDF files? I do not know anything about JAVA and have a fairly archaic computer system.
This project is very dear to me, and I am hoping I can yet retrieve it. However, I am not eager to invest more $$$ in Adobe products to accomplish my goal of merging these files into a final consolidated PDF project.
I hope my situation and questions are clear and I am sorry to trouble you with my little problem. Thanking you in advance for any help you can provide!
Best wishes and thanks again.
@Need An Assist, Please
You could probably do it with iText, unless Adobe reader is complaining because the PDF is really crap and invalid. Please contact for things like that.
Then there is no problem, it’s just random people posting things on the mailinglist like
Dear all,
Fedora packagers have one big problem. The code is licensing on AGPL for
all this project?
that gets us frustrated. They probably don’t even know what they are talking about.
But, what is the problem of using iText 5.x ? It’s for opensource software no? Doesn’t AGPL allow the usage of it then. Yes there is advice to leave the producer line intact, then the programs that use it should do so out of kindness and respect that they are using iText.
I could misinterpret it of course…
Hi Bruno,
I am the maintainer of the itext package in Fedora. We need the itext library to satisfy the dependencies of our 3 (libfonts, pdftk and tuxguitar) packages.
I am not sure how this escalated to a degree that frustrated itext developers, but let me explain what happened:
– The original itext-5.0 license raised a concern on 1 Fedora member last August. He advised Fedora-Legal to investigate the license [1] in case we are updating itext from 2.1.7.
– Since none of the 3 Fedora packages that use itext have their code ported to the itext-5 API [2], we decided to postpone the investigation to a later date.
This is it. There was no other discussion in Fedora World about licensing of itext. Can you explain to us what part of this made you upset?
[1] This policy of consulting Fedora-Legal is something very standard among Fedora packagers, and we usually do this when we encounter an uncommon license. Check out the archives if you would like to verify: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-legal-list/ After all, we de not want to get in legal trouble.
[2] Actually, I ported one of these 3 packages myself, but did not have the motivation and need to do the others.
I can’t agree more. I wonder what their issues are
Do we care? Sure: it’s an honor to have our software shipped in Linux distributions such as Fedora, Debian, and the likes, but recently that honor is becoming a burden: whatever we do, it’s never enough!
The essence of my personal discontent is probably that the continuous problems Fedora has with iText are self-induced. If they’ve adopted a policy that prevents them from shipping iText, then maybe the problem is theirs, not mine.
@Pieter
1. I’m providing an abundance of information: on the site, in the book, on demand; but some people just don’t consult that information. That’s frustrating.
2. Some people do read the information that is provided, but don’t accept the content or the consequences. They want me to adapt policies, licenses, etc for one sole purpose: to make them meet their needs. NOT to improve my policies, licenses,… Suggestions for improvements are ALWAYS welcome. (Obviously!)
I have some experience with free and open source software: I’ve contributed code to other projects and I’ve received code contributions in return. In my experience, people as described in the two categories above are often (not always) counter-productive. They drain away time, money, energy,… All these resources are better spent on productive work.
@Pieter that’s almost what I did too. (i wrote “Only 1 ? they are lucky 🙂 ” And people should learn to search in mailinglist archives before asking/stating the same over and over.
note: it doesn’t make it clear to me why you want to package javalibraries in a linux distro, unless there are other packages/applications depending on it. But then they’re probably open source and and then there is no problem that iText is AGPL, or do I see that wrong? Any one can enlighten me?
Hi Balder and Bruno,
If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from my experience with working with other developers, it must be that a small percentage of developers will always want to feel important and will interact extensively with other people before writing any code. This may be very frustrating, but in the end they may appear to be one of the best contributors to the project. In fact, anyone who contacts you is a potential contributor (in any kind of way) and I don’t like to judge anyone from the first mailing. The way I handle this is replying two or three links which explain everything that might be related.
Now for the mailing of this Fedora-contributor:
“Fedora packagers have one big problem.” – Yes they do, they’re packaging for Fedora and not for Debian.
“The code is licensing on AGPL for all this project?” – Yes it is, lucky you! http://itextpdf.com/terms-of-use/agpl.php
Pieter
I’m getting tired of these kind of questions.
We’ve done serious efforts in the past to help Fedora as well as Debian packagers. We’ve done IP reviews, asking formal permission for specific contributions that were questioned by Fedora; we’ve provided lists of contributors for Debian; for iText 5.1, we’ve even changed the phrasing of the license in almost every class file (as asked by the Debian community).
In short: we’ve shown plenty of goodwill towards the Linux-oriented open source community, as we’ve always done to the complete open source community. BUT THERE’S A LIMIT TO THAT GOODWILL!
I have one big problem with Fedora and Debian too: All these questions and requests for changes are costing me time and money (for the latest change I had to consult with my attorney), and what are Fedora nor Debian given in return? They criticize, they complain, they whine. That’s NOT what open source is about. Open source is about sharing and about freedom, NOT about constantly harassing open source developers, NOT about forcing open source developers to pay lawyers!