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philjohnson05/03/20254 repliesview on HN

(1) Yes, I am very familiar with the WASM compilation of MuPDF. It's got a lot of great features. I actually built another product pdfredactoronline.com that does redaction fully in the browser using the MuPDF WASM compilation. The reason I don't use it in BreezePDF is MuPDF has an APGL license which requires open-sourcing any code that uses their software. Which, I guess technically anything fully browser based is essentially open sourced :) so perhaps I could use it here.

Since a lot of the basic functionality I've added so far is also covered by more permissible packages like the ones you mentioned, I've started out just using those. But thanks for bringing that up, I'll revisit using MuPDF for redaction and other features

(2) I went with pdf-lib-plus-encrypt because the original pdf-lib doesn't have functionality for password-protecting PDFs, and since pdf-lib-plus-encrypt does, I used it so I could have that feature


Replies

NoahZuniga05/04/2025

> Which, I guess technically anything fully browser based is essentially open sourced :) so perhaps I could use it here.

Open source isn't just about the source code being available (and when making web apps, there is often a compile step which makes the browser facing code not source code), but also about the license under which it is available.

It is in every sense of the word technically not open source.

hasbot05/05/2025

Weird that a google search for "pdf redact online" or "pdf redactor online" doesn't show your site in the first page.

show 1 reply
sroussey05/04/2025

Is your code available?

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speerer05/03/2025

Thanks for the insight. Yes, the AGPL isn't a problem for me - I didn't check your licence as I could just view source :)