ZetPDF - Does anyone know the background of this Product? [closed]

Question

Questions:

Is ZetPDF just PDFSharp in disguise?

Is this product going to stick around?

Who are ZetPDF?

---

We are currently using PDFSharp to create our PDFs from scratch. We need to be able to draw in specific areas, add images from embedded resources, use a pdf embedded resource as a template for a new PDF, add barcodes (i.e. specific fonts or images), add things at exact locations, wrap text, and also do text flow pdfs (migradoc).

PdfSharp does all of these things, but I like to look around at any alternatives out there as I get nervous at the lack of progress, or zero updates on PdfSharp (and the fact it is still beta). And I would also like to see if there is a product that will support .NET Core.

So I have recently discovered ZetPDF. https://zetpdf.com/

It looks extremely similar to PdfSharp.

There seems to be very little information around about it. Is this a project that will be worked on and kept up to date? There is a licence cost to use, but is very reasonable, however I feel uncomfortable paying for a product when there is no information about the company/group who are producing this product.

Example of similarity to PdfSharp (from their Samples - Unicode example program):

// The current implementation of ZetPDF is limited to left-to-right languages.
  // Languages like Arabic cannot yet be created even with Unicode fonts. Also the so called
  // CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) support in PDF can also not be addressed with PDF sharp.
  // However, we plan to support as much as possible languages with ZetPDF. If you are a 
  // programmer and a native speaker of one of these languages and you like to create PDF
  // documents in your language, you can help us to implement it in ZetPDF. You don't have
  // to do the programming, but just help us to verify our implementation.

The above is very similar to what is in PDF Sharp notes, and even has PDF Sharp words in the text. I don't really have a problem with this, as really like how PDF Sharp works, but is this project just PDF Sharp in disguise?

I would like to find out a bit more about ZetPDF before I invest time and effort into seeing if it is better than PdfSharp, or really does everything I need, even in .Net Core.

Halloran

My guess is somebody took the PDFsharp source code and is trying to sell it as a new product. You should stay away from it. – Forfend

Any reason for the down vote? I am also wondering the above hence the question posted here. – Halloran

I think you got a down vote because the question is not about programming. – Forfend

hmm, it is certainly about a product that i want to use in my programming, in a very involved way.... and about whether to change all my current code to a new library, dll, etc... :-( – Halloran

Somebody certainly took the PDFsharp source code to build ZetPDF. It's unclear how many improvements they added. ZetPDF is at version 1.32 while PDFsharp is at version 1.50. Version numbers don't mean much, but PDFsharp may have bug fixes not included in ZetPDF. – Ringtailed

This is obviously not a good post for this site, but while I'm here: please report this to the people at PDFSharp, because the copied library may violate the clause The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. in the MIT license – Ecumenicity

Hi @blagae, will see if i can notify PDFSharp. What site would you suggest is a good place to post this sort of question? – Halloran

I haven't used the site myself, but "Software Recommendations" looks like a decent fit (but please read the site description, rather than taking my word for it) – Ecumenicity

For what it's worth, we have been seeing increasing amounts of ZetPDF spam on Stack Overflow and related sites recently. – Fowle

I'm closing this question as off-topic because it is about managing a business relationship, communicating between the question OP and a third party, and/or dealing with a legal issue. In other words, it's not about programming as defined in the help center. You might be able to get help from the Customer Service for the company you are interfacing with. If you want an interpretation of legal requirements, it might be appropriate to ask on Law, but read their on-topic page first. – Prochora