Bug 708552

Summary: out to date
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: MERCIER Jonathan <bioinfornatics>
Component: itextAssignee: Orcan Ogetbil <oget.fedora>
Status: CLOSED CANTFIX QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 15CC: jochen, oget.fedora
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OS: Unspecified   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2011-07-29 21:52:10 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description MERCIER Jonathan 2011-05-27 23:37:51 UTC
Description of problem:

itext in fedora repo seem to be outdated!
references:
- http://itextpdf.com/history/?branch=51&node=510
- http://www.lowagie.com/itext510
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/itext/files/iText/iText5.1.0/

thanks for your works

Comment 1 Orcan Ogetbil 2011-05-28 00:26:18 UTC
Thanks for the report. Of course we considered updating itext, but there are two big issues blocking us:

- itext5 comes with significant API changes. Currently, by looking at all the  Fedora packages that use the itext library, we see that none of the upstream developers ported their code to use itext5. (We have a patch to convert pdftk to use itext5 but there are other packages that need the conversion too.)

- More importantly, itext5 comes with a license change. There is an open question about the freedom of the itext5 license. 
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/legal/2010-August/001352.html

Until the licensing issue is cleared, we cannot have itext5 in Fedora. Moreover, I don't know of a Linux distribution which updated their itext to itext-5 (please prove me wrong). Why do you think we need it?

If you want to work on this, could you ask the developer to release itext-5 under LGPL, which was the license of itext-2? This will save us all the trouble. Thank you.

Comment 2 MERCIER Jonathan 2011-05-28 07:43:36 UTC
thanks for your answer,
I need itext5, because i work on biojava package but it has a dependencie from forester. and forester need itext5.
So for add biojava package i need itext5

I will send a mail to itext5 team

thanks a lot

Comment 4 MERCIER Jonathan 2011-05-28 08:00:40 UTC
oh ok i understand the licensing problem

Comment 6 MERCIER Jonathan 2011-05-30 09:28:00 UTC
@Orcan Ogetbil: could you read this please: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=27574906

thanks

Comment 7 MERCIER Jonathan 2011-07-29 21:18:52 UTC
Wich action will be do ?
if nothing you could to close this bug else change status ;)

Comment 8 Orcan Ogetbil 2011-07-29 21:52:10 UTC
Richard Fontana explained in the legal list why itext5 cannot be allowed in Fedora:
  http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/legal/2011-June/001656.html

Sorry I thought you were following the discussion. I started communicating with the itext developers too, but I admit that due to the time constraints I could not carry out the conversation any further.

In short, itext-5 cannot be in Fedora the way it is. Read Richard's email, and he explains why. It is basically against Fedora policies. From my understanding  it may be free "legally" but not free enough to be in Fedora. You can follow up with the itext developers if you want. I don't have the motivation and the time to do so.

Closing the bug CANTFIX. We will continue with itext-2. If you manage to convince the itext developers, let us know.