[Fribidi-discuss] License question to the project owners

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On Fri, 11 Jul 2003, Paulo Soares wrote:

> I'm an iText (www.lowagie.com/iText) developer. iText is a java library for
> the generation of PDF documents that has a dual license, LGPL or MPL/LGPL.

Nice project, and better news that you are considering R2L 
scripts too!

> I added some time ago support for bidi text using java.awt.font.TextLayout
> to get the order levels. This solution works very well but requires the awt
> toolkit and it's the only feature in iText that requires it. Many unix
> servers where the library is installed on don't have a X server and use java
> 1.3 or lower not being able to benefit from the headless option in java 1.4.
> Making it work requires PJA or Xvfb but that's always a source of another
> batch of problems.
>
> I decided to look around for an awt independent solution to get the order
> levels and fribidi came on top of my list not only for conformance reasons
> but also because it has a clean architecture, or at least an architecture
> that I can understand.

You have made the right choice!  By the way, what are you going 
to do for Arabic Shaping?  I can provide you the code for that 
too.  If you have enough time to wait for a few months, or if you 
are going to do the port again, you will get Arabic shaping in 
the same architecture of FriBidi too.
 
> My problems start with the dual licensing of iText. Either I say somewhere
> that if you want Arabic without using awt you are restricted to LGPL or, and
> that's my request, I get some kind of exception from you for this partial
> port to java and the MPL/LGPL license can still be applied even for the
> fribidi part.

What I have found for now is that you can distribute the fribidi 
port for java in another library under LGPL, and use it in your 
iText software with any license.

> Best Regards,
> Paulo Soares 

-- 
Behdad Esfahbod		22 Tir 1382, 2003 Jul 13 
http://behdad.org/	[Finger for Geek Code]

If you do a job too well, you'll get stuck with it.