It's really interesting to see that there are foxit employees on the list of committers. I assume that means that it was initially a fork of the foxit PDF reader?
I saw no evidence in the project showing that this file has BSD-style license.And since it is part of the windows SDK, it is nearly impossible to be BSD-style licensed.
Maybe it was included from foxit's code or other codebase but it is better to be put into the thirdparties directory due to the license issue.
Edited:
Thanks for pointing out my misconception about Windows SDK.
The SDK has a very permissive license (including redistribution), since it's obviously designed to be used, and it's convenient to developers to be able to redistribute parts of it to ease development.
Agreed it is always nice to have these things in a thirdparty directory, though, but the larger Chromium project actually does appear to have all of pdfium in third_party, which helps keep that clear.
It's perfectly legal for Foxit to license their own software to Google to be released under the terms of the BSD license. This would be with Foxit's consent, of course.
It's important to understand that a license isn't on the code itself, but merely on a copy of the code. A copyright owner reserves full rights to whatever the hell they want to do with their code; open-source projects just release a version with a specific set of restrictions. It gets more interesting with contributors, and specifying a license for the contributed code.
I used the term 'initially' for a reason. My guess would be that the Chrome team used the Foxit SDK to get it out the door quickly, then over time and with Foxit guidance, replaced parts with their home grown source. That's just a guess, though.
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It's really interesting to see that there are foxit employees on the list of committers. I assume that means that it was initially a fork of the foxit PDF reader?
https://pdfium.googlesource.com/pdfium/+/master/fpdfsdk/incl...
"Original code copyright 2014 Foxit Software Inc. http://www.foxitsoftware.com"
What about this one ?
https://pdfium.googlesource.com/pdfium/+/master/core/src/fxg...
"/\ * * Copyright (c) 1998-2000, Microsoft Corp. All Rights Reserved. * * Module Name: * * Gdiplus.h * * Abstract: * * GDI+ Native C++ public header file * \/ "
Part of the Windows SDK.
Correct me if I am wrong.
I saw no evidence in the project showing that this file has BSD-style license.And since it is part of the windows SDK, it is nearly impossible to be BSD-style licensed.
Maybe it was included from foxit's code or other codebase but it is better to be put into the thirdparties directory due to the license issue.
Edited:
Thanks for pointing out my misconception about Windows SDK.
The SDK has a very permissive license (including redistribution), since it's obviously designed to be used, and it's convenient to developers to be able to redistribute parts of it to ease development.
Agreed it is always nice to have these things in a thirdparty directory, though, but the larger Chromium project actually does appear to have all of pdfium in third_party, which helps keep that clear.
Foxit isn't open-source, so I don't think it would be legal to release a derivative under the BSD license (IANAL).
It's perfectly legal for Foxit to license their own software to Google to be released under the terms of the BSD license. This would be with Foxit's consent, of course.
Right, and probably some money changing hands.
It's important to understand that a license isn't on the code itself, but merely on a copy of the code. A copyright owner reserves full rights to whatever the hell they want to do with their code; open-source projects just release a version with a specific set of restrictions. It gets more interesting with contributors, and specifying a license for the contributed code.
I used the term 'initially' for a reason. My guess would be that the Chrome team used the Foxit SDK to get it out the door quickly, then over time and with Foxit guidance, replaced parts with their home grown source. That's just a guess, though.