licensing consideration of using itextsharp in a saas project

Question

Hi

I might need to use iTextSharp for a project I'm working on. I'd prefer to use the latest version so I'm trying to understand what the full implications of the GNU Affero General Public License is. I've read though the FSF documents but still have questions. I'm not going to modify it in any way, just call it from a component (windows service) that I've written. This component references other modules from the product I work on.

Currently the component is deployed on a server which runs website instances of the product for our clients. The component does work for all of the sites. We don't plan on distributing the product to clients yet, but it is on our roadmap for the future.

Would the component come under the GNU Affero General Public License when I use iTextSharp and therefore need to be made available for download? Would the other modules from the product referenced by my component come under the license as well?

Basically for the situation I've outlined above what would I need to do to keep within the licence agreement?

Thanks

K

Answer 1

Hi Kirk,

i was also looking into using iTextSharp in a web application.

However the following paragraph from http://itextpdf.com/terms-of-use/ clarified the licensing implications:

Buying such a license is mandatory as soon as you develop commercial activities involving the iText software without disclosing the source code of your own applications. These activities include: offering paid services to customers as an ASP, serving PDFs on the fly in a web application, shipping iText with a closed source product.

Regards.

Answer 2

iTextSharp uses the LGPL license agreement and not the Affero model, http://www.java2s.com/Open-Source/CSharp/PDF/iTextSharp/CatalogiTextSharp.htm , License: GNU Library or Lesser General Public License (LGPL) says it right there.

iText is different from iTextSharp and both have separate licenses