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Comment by robocop2018 | Hacker News Reader

robocop2018

It's open source.

Their website and marketing of this fact (is it a fact?) is very confusing or misleading. The comparison at https://pdfjs.express/pdfjs-vs-express says "PDF.js is an open-source PDF library that was created by Mozilla in 2011 to let you open and render PDFs in web browsers using JavaScript. PDF.js Express is a fully-featured commercial PDF.js viewer with a modern and customizable UI."

I would really like to know whether or not "PDF.js Express" is open source. Why? Because I've done a lot of work on react + pdf.js already (for a latex editor), and it's been high on my todo list to add annotation features. So PDF.js express significantly overlaps with something I'm very seriously planning to do...

Evidently I should clarify that by "open source", I mean "released under an OSI approved license" (https://opensource.org/licenses). Maybe robocop2018 means "open source" in the sense of "there is possibly minified non-human readable source code that you can look at under a very restrictive non-OSI license"?

Thank you for your feedback and question. My apologies if it’s unclear. The source code for the UI is available on GitHub [1], but is minified in the download package for efficiency. Note that even though the code is "open source" in that repo, we still have a custom license [2]. [1] https://github.com/PDFTron/webviewer-ui [2] https://github.com/PDFTron/webviewer-ui/blob/6.2/LICENSE

So which is it? robocop2018 is claiming it's AGPL/commercial dual-licensed, but you say it just has the custom license and that's the only license in the repo?

We are in the process of updating the site. The product will be licensed under dual GPL/commercial terms (re: what it means see bit.ly/2JD0Yj0)

Please don't use the term open source, not even in quotes, if your code is not available under a license that meets the Open Source Definition or the Free Software Definition.

The license reads "WebViewer React UI project/codebase or any derived works is only permitted in solutions with an active commercial PDFTron WebViewer license. For exact licensing terms please refer to your commercial WebViewer license. For use in other scenario, please contact sales@pdftron.com".

That is a proprietary source-available license, very much not open source at all.

PDF.js Express is not open source.

It is available under dual AGPL/commercial license so indeed it's open source by any definition. We'll clarify this on the site. Thanks for feedback

https://github.com/PDFTron/webviewer-ui/search?q=agpl&unscop... ?

What license is this under? Where can I get the source code?

The website says it is open source in one place, and then in other places it says it is a "commercial PDF web viewer that wraps around the PDF.js open-source rendering engine."

I didn't see any link to the source code or license anywhere on the site?

See other messages. The code is available and will be licensed under dual commercial/AGPL terms (similar to bit.ly/2JD0Yj0)

Are you affiliated with PDFTron, the company that created this? Your posting history suggests you are. Please disclose if so.

Yes, I am employed by PDFTron. I've been leading this project since early 2019.

I was asking "robocop2018". Are you him?

I am not "him" :) though I work at PDFTron

As Nick says the project is open source (https://github.com/PDFTron/webviewer-ui).

Express is available under under dual AGPL/commercial license ( similar to iText and lot's of other popular OSS )

Where is the AGPL license?

It's https://opensource.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0 Or summary of what it means bit.ly/2JD0Yj0

If you are talking about info on the site & git, we are working on it. There will be many changes over next few weeks. Stay tuned :)

Yes, I'm familiar with the license.

The question was about your claim that it was already licensed under it. Apparently it's not, but you're "working on it". Umm, okay.

There is no mention of AGPL anywhere in that repository. There is just a LICENSE file with a completely different proprietary license: it is not open source at present. If you intend to make it open source, you need to change the license to an open source one.

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