Michael Olenick wrote:
> People -- Call or write to Bruno's sales agent.

Thanks!

I've had a speed course in economics at http://www.vlerick.com/ last 
year, discovering there's more to the IT business than writing code.

It's all about the business model, not just the business model used for 
iText, but also the business model of the end user/developer.

You've explained that very well. We are using a license (be it the AGPL, 
or a commercial license) because that's better for everyone. If you 
choose the AGPL, you share your code. If you choose the commercial 
license, you share some of your revenue.

The situation before the AGPL was not healthy. At some point, I had the 
impression I was being suffocated: plenty of people were mailing me 
personally, DEMANDING a solution for their problem. I didn't have any 
time to think about new code anymore, and that's not good: a good 
product has to offer continuity!

Recently, I attended an event where I had a talk with a CEO of a company 
who had been using iText for years. He said that he was now looking for 
another free product "because he could no longer use iText."
I asked him how much switching to another library would cost in terms of 
development, and what he would do if that other free library decided to 
change its license too (because it's easy to run a F/OSS product if 
you're not successful, but it's a lot of hard work as soon as people 
actually start using it).
He hadn't thought about that yet, but I saw that he realized that would 
probably cost him far more than to have another chat with sales.
So it goes...
-- 
This answer is provided by 1T3XT BVBA
http://www.1t3xt.com/ - http://www.1t3xt.info

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_______________________________________________
iText-questions mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/itext-questions

Buy the iText book: http://www.itextpdf.com/book/
Check the site with examples before you ask questions: 
http://www.1t3xt.info/examples/
You can also search the keywords list: http://1t3xt.info/tutorials/keywords/

Reply via email to