4 ms·
> Text PDF's entire business relies on interpreting the AGPL as being as viral as possible [0]: This page is just even more nonsensical than TFA. This is not "
by AshamedCaptain 3y ago
> Text PDF's entire business relies on interpreting the AGPL as being as viral as possible [0]:
This page is just even more nonsensical than TFA. This is not "an interpretation of the AGPL that is as viral as possible", this is just a custom license that tries to masquerade itself as the AGPL. For example, the following term is batshit insane:
> When using iText Core/Community under AGPL, you must prominently mention iText and include the iText copyright and AGPL license in output file metadata, and also retain the producer line in every PDF that is created or manipulated using iText.
Yeah, no. If it was really AGPL, no one would forbid me from just removing all the watermarking code AND THEN publishing the non-watermark version to whoemever I wanted to.
There's a friggin reason 4-clause BSD is considered incompatible with the GPL. The advertising clause doesn't fit into any of the additional requirements that the GPL allows you to exceptionally introduce. A watermark is even a stronger requirement.
- lolinder 3y agoI'm inclined to agree that iText's position is bogus, but the point is that Google isn't inventing the idea of AGPL's virality out of whole cloth, they're using a definition that major vendors of AGPL software espouse. Interpreting it in the way that the vendors do is not a psy-op, it's just reasonable caution.
- AshamedCaptain 3y agoMajor vendors of what? I had never heard of iText before (unless it is related to the 90s PalmOS software of the same name ? ) . But in any case this is like trying to find problems in the GPL from a careful reading of the MS Public License. Sure the Ms-PL is a viral license from one of the "major software vendors of all history", but it is NOT the GPL.