Hi Bruno,
i would like to reply because you addressed me personally.
> On top of that, one also has to ensure that the IP is clean. Without this,
> corporate customers who wish
> to use the product run a very high risk of being sued for violation. If
> they decided to use an open source product, they would have no one to
> turn to because of a license like the LGPL which indemnifies the
> contributors.
>
Tobias twisted my words making fun of "taking responsibility for iText
> 2.x". Of course NOBODY takes responsibility for the old version, but
> I've worked a full year in close cooperation with a battery of lawyers
> to clean up iText and to make an overview of the Intellectual Property,
> removing every single line of rogue code. That was not the most exciting
> year of my life, but the result is iText 5.+.
>
So what you are trying to say is that if a company is using a pre 5.x
version of iText you and the other developers could be held liable? (Not for
the code you have written but for the code where you not hold the IP?)
> I almost fell from my chair when I read Tobias' remark saying
> documentation wasn't necessary...
>
Ok Bruno now you twist my words. I haven't said that documentation isn't
necessary. Since i own your book myself a good documentation is always
appreciated. What i said is that open source projects sometimes have a bad
documentation. In some cases there isn't even any documentation at all. But
if it is worth it people are still using it. That's anything other then
ideal but that's one difference between FOSS and commercial software. It has
been much much worse in the past and FOSS projects are really improving but
there is still a gap. But people know that in the first place. (Ok maybe not
the ones who DEMANDED changes in the past from you).
And if somebody would make a fork they would definitely benefit from your
good documentation, online and printed. Because let's be honest here - a
fork wouldn't be much different from the original version, at least not in
the beginning...
Bruno, i just want to point out, that i am not yelling for a fork here - I
would just like to give a more factual argumentation in a discussion which
isn't always a factual one... I, too appreciate your hard work and effort
which you put into the project!
kind regards,
ToM
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nokia and AT&T present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest
Create new apps & games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada
$10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing
Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store
http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev
_______________________________________________
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/
