iTextSharp Licensing

Question

We would like to use iTextSharp DLL in one of our project to extract PDF text but I'm having 2nd thought to release it to production because I read somewhere that we need to purchase a commercial license for us to be able to use iTexttSharp. Is this true? We will just consumed the DLL and we will not change anything, do we still need to buy a license?

Thanks in Advance!

Solution

iText is free software released under the AGPL. This means that it can be used for free on condition that you also release the source code of your project for free under the same license. As soon as you start offering the code or the project (e.g. in the context of a SaaS offering) under a different license, then you should purchase a commercial license. That is explained in a one-minute video and it's the subject of my JavaOne talk on October 28th: IANAL: what developers should know about IP and legal. You'll notice that we have successfully went to court to make sure that the open source license was honored.