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Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

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Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#21

Post by williamstein »

williamstein wrote: post #18
robocop2018 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whet…

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"?

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#22

Post by williamstein »

phonon wrote: post #14

FIle is here https://registry.npmjs.org/@pdftron/pdfjs-express/-/pdfjs-ex... They bundle both a Apache 2.0 "PDFJS-LICENSE" AND a "PDF.js Express Evaluation License.pdf" which seem to conflict with each other.

I suspect that the Apache license is meant to only apply to the PDFJS source code, and the "... Evaluation License" applies to the minified/bundled pdfjs express code that's in there (but not actually human readable?). That's my guess.

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#23

Post by cl42 »

spankalee wrote: post #20
cl42 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you thought of turning your wrappers into a service/SaaS offering? Sounds valuable!!

Or open sourcing it? This seems like one of those complex-enough areas that having multiple groups and companies contribute to a common good could really pay off for everyone.

Yes! +1

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#24

Post by ensignavenger »

robocop2018 wrote: post #8
williamstein wrote: post #2

Wow, if only this was open source...

It's open source.

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?

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#25

Post by 2pointsomone »

spankalee wrote: post #20
cl42 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you thought of turning your wrappers into a service/SaaS offering? Sounds valuable!!

Or open sourcing it? This seems like one of those complex-enough areas that having multiple groups and companies contribute to a common good could really pay off for everyone.

I agree with both of you. Our wrappers are currently very tightly glued to the rest of the product, and have a lot of hacks (hint: PDFJS documentation is not very rich, they have barely touched their documentation since they came out). So what we have is in no good state to release, unfortunately :( But if someone does initiate serious work, we will jump in with our contributions.

But to your points: because there is no good open source initiative that does what PDFJS Express does, commercial providers like PDFJS Express and PSPDFKit are able to build pricy SaaS offerings.

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#26

Post by detaro »

robocop2018 wrote: post #7
battery_cowboy wrote: post #4

Do you just use the open source PDF.js engine or do you contribute back to the project with fixes and features?

It's an extension of pdf.js, not a fork.

The parent didn't ask if it was a fork or not.

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#27

Post by phonon »

williamstein wrote: post #22
phonon wrote: post #14

FIle is here https://registry.npmjs.org/@pdftron/pdfjs-express/-/pdfjs-ex... They bundle both a Apache 2.0 "PDFJS-LICENSE" AND a "PDF.js Express Evaluation License.pdf" which seem to conflict with each other.

I suspect that the Apache license is meant to only apply to the PDFJS source code, and the "... Evaluation License" applies to the minified/bundled pdfjs express code that's in there (but not actually human readable?). That's my guess.

I think you're right, but how is someone supposed to know which parts go with which? I guess \pdfjs-express-6.2.1\package\public\core\pdfjs is Apache 2.0 and everything else is commercial?

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#28

Post by williamstein »

spankalee wrote: post #20
cl42 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you thought of turning your wrappers into a service/SaaS offering? Sounds valuable!!

Or open sourcing it? This seems like one of those complex-enough areas that having multiple groups and companies contribute to a common good could really pay off for everyone.

I agree. I would definitely love to integrate (and improve) this as part of my SAAS product, and I would spend way more than $400/year in effort on it. However, I can't possibly use or buy this as is, because it isn't open source. For comparison, my company pays for the CodeMirror "moral license"...

Re: Show HN: Pdf.js Express – PDF annotation, e-signatures, and form filling

#29

Post by 2pointsomone »

williamstein wrote: post #28
spankalee wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or open sourcing it? This seems like one of those complex-enough areas that having multiple groups and companies contribute to a common good could really pay off for everyone.

I agree. I would definitely love to integrate (and improve) this as part of my SAAS product, and I would spend way more than $400/year in effort on it. However, I can't possibly use or buy this as is, because it isn't open source. For comparison, my company pays for the CodeMirror "moral license"...

$400/month is what PDFJS express is charging. $400/yr would have been a little difficult to swallow too, but this amount is just absurd for a product where most of the underlying technology is open-source.
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