Re: [iText-questions] What action is requred in terms of License
What is the problem? Instead of complaining, you should start explaining. There are very cheap licenses for iText, cheaper than what is claimed here. Although more expensive than the $5 some people want to pay, which is kind of insulting, don't you agree? Hi Bruno, the license fees for desktop applications start with 3000 $ for the deployment of 250 copies and they go up to 25000 $. This is not payable for projects, that have a budget of 5000 $ in total. I would greatly appriciate if there would be an option to obtain per developer licenses with no fees for deployment, just like many other libraries handle this. Bye, Michael -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net 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/
Re: [iText-questions] What action is requred in terms of License
P.S. I can post the mail from the sales department with the licensing details, if you want. The prices are not my idea, but I received the list from itextsoftware.com. -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net 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/
Re: [iText-questions] What action is requred in terms of License
Hi Bruno, thank you very much for the clarification. I wrote to sa...@itextpdf.com and described what type of application I am developing. I am programming as a freelancer for customers who pay me and the 5000 $ is the wage for the whole projects that take about one month (and not 5 days) to complete. The customers themselves publish the applications.I neither have details about the sales numbers, nor do I have the possibility to open source the applications. From sa...@itextpdf.com I received the information, that I needed an OEM license with the given prices. Obviously, there was a communication problem and I will write to sa...@itextpdf.com again. I hope, there is the possibility to find a compromise, because I otherwise would have to stop using itext, which I really like. Maybe it could help to openly communicate license details for commercial licenses on the net in order to avoid misunderstandings. So, what license is needed in this case in order to get things right this time? Bye, Michael 2010/4/25 Bruno Lowagie br...@lowagie.com Michael Schmodt wrote: P.S. I can post the mail from the sales department with the licensing details, if you want. The prices are not my idea, but I received the list from itextsoftware.com http://itextsoftware.com. I think you should post this to sa...@itextpdf.com because I think you are mixing different things. Seems like you are talking about the prices for an OEM license, but you sound like you need a limited number of simple end user licenses (end users who don't not distribute the product). There's a huge difference. Note that I know very little about the actual pricing. So it's best to discuss this with sales. On a personal note: What is the return on a /product/ that is made with a budget of only $5000? That's a product involving about 5 days of work (European price for a senior developer; imagine how much money I'm giving away giving free advice on this list). I don't understand. Wouldn't it be better to publish such a low-budget product for free and make it AGPL? Or are you talking about a /project/ you're doing for a customer who only pays $5000? In that case, why are you talking about OEM prices? -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net 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/ -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net 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/
Re: [iText-questions] What action is requred in terms of License
2010/4/25 David Hoffer dhoff...@gmail.com I don't disagree with the last couple replies, however I will point out that iText is the one that caused the mis-expectations on price. Since prior versions cost $0 it is quite a shock to learn that new versions cost $12,500. (Please understand I'm not saying $0 is the right price.) What makes it even harder is that there are no published prices for the new version of iText. Unless your doing waterfall development (so you think you know everything up front) you don't always know what's needed at the beginning. If I would go to my customer with a Y charge of $12,500 that would be the end of it. I'm only saying all this because I was asked to explain, in my case the older 2.x version is just fine and FOP a viable option if iText continues with the current pricing. I agree with Dave! I think, it is fair to pay the iText developers for their fantastic work. I do not have a problem with that. The problem: For my customers, it is completely irrelevant, what investments I have to do, to build an application. They give me 5000 bucks in total to deliver a programm. If there are license fees, it's me who has to deal with it. If I do not comply, somebody else get's the job. The applications aren't targeted at the mass market, so there aren't huge numbers of copies of the programms. When calculating the price, it's about 7% or 12 $ per programm that I earn (minus costs, taxes ...). I do not have exact numbers, but that should be quite representative. I surely can agree, that the customer and not the developer should care about the license, but unfortunately, that is not the way life is. The customers are from non IT businesses who want additions/extension to existing non IT products. They never heard of LGPL, GPL, AGPL or license fees for software libraries. I agree with Dave, that 300 $ would be perfectly fine and after all, 300$ from single developers is for you as well a question of getting 300$ or getting no fees and letting developer stick with earlier versions of itext or using other libraries. I hope, I didn't upset you. This is not what I want. As I said, I like iText very much and would like to use it in the future. I respect your decission to change the license and to get a share from the profits of those, who use your lib. Try to see this debate as a valuable feedback to determine optimal prices for the lib, that can maximize your income as well. By, Michael -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net 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/
Re: [iText-questions] What action is requred in terms of License
Hi Campus, as far as I can see, there are different licenses depending on the type of application. For desktop installations (when itext is shipped with an application) for the first 250 desktop installations you have to pay 3000 $ and it goes up to 25 000 $ for 5 000 to 50 000 copies. So it gets cheaper for huge projects und you can obtain a license without restrictions for a price, that I do not know. I guess, big players on the software market will have no problem with that, but that surely doesn't account for most software developers especially if they work as single developers. You are obliged to report sales quaterly by the way. One support case is included (but for myself I wouldn't need support). Bye, Michael That's an interesting topic. Just being curious: What's the amount to pay for a commercial iText license? We had the same problem and decided to fork iText 2.1.7. We are also heavily working on that base trying to refactor all these bad little things out of the code and applying additional fixes. I would happily pay some money to get a lib and support but with the currently non-existent professional support for iText asking for money does not represent the state of the project at least to me. Just my 2c, Campus -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net 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/ -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net 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/
Re: [iText-questions] What action is requred in terms of License
2010/4/22 Bruno Lowagie br...@lowagie.com Michael Olenick wrote: If you're making money from iText -- with making money being defined as somebody is paying you -- you should pay for it. There's a lot of hard work that went into the creation and support of this awesome tool. Thanks! best regards, Bruno That's very interessting: I am working both in research at an university and within a small startup (spin off) from the university. The software projects are closed source freeware and closed source commercial software with a share of about 50% each. I requested information about obtaining a commercial license and I was pretty astonished: The license fees were magnitudes beyond the complete project budgets with very strict obligations. I am really willing to obtain a license and to pay several 100 $ for it and I find it absolutely ok for the developers to earn money with their fantastic library. But: The current license fees are affordable for big industries only. I already thought about stopping to use iText or to stick with 2.1.7. After all,within my programms this is only a small component for generating reports in order to show the results of computation processes. I think, there are a lot of small projects and developers who are in the same situation. If there is another way, I would appreciate this very much, and as I said: I really like your lib and I am really willing to pay for it. But I can't invest 150% of the whole budgets on the reporting component only, and I am not willing to report the number of distribution number several times a year. Have you ever thought about single developer licenses with no fees for redistribution? Bye, Michael -- ___ iText-questions mailing list iText-questions@lists.sourceforge.net 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/
