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N
nicolasg63317848
Participant
April 3, 2017
Question

License for SDK use in company’s internal application

  • April 3, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 1262 views

  Hi,

I have a question regarding the Acrobat Software Developer Kit and Adobe Acrobat user licenses.

We developed a text analysis software prototype for the internal use of one of our client.

For one specific step of the process, we need to extract text from pdf to html : Our solution uses Acrobat SDK IAC to automate this exportation process.

We now want to deploy the software on the company’s information system:

* The software will be hosted on the company’s internal servers.

* The frequency of Acrobat IAC API calls is estimated to be 20 calls per day.

I would like to know what license is needed for this kind of use:

* Is it possible to use a regular user license for this purpose or do we need a specific one for professional uses ?

* Is the number of calls to the API limited with the regular license ?

Thank you in advance for your answer.

Best regards 

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
April 5, 2017

LiveCycle PDF Generator is designed to run as a server application. Contact sales if you want to evaluate LiveCycle products. The pricing is by negotiation, but is at enterprise levels.

Karl Heinz Kremer
Community Expert
Karl Heinz KremerCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 3, 2017

Using the Acrobat SDK requires Adobe Acrobat. You cannot run Acrobat on a server (or in a server-like environment) - details are in the EULA that you accepted when you installed Acrobat. This means that you cannot use your application - which would require Acrobat - on a server. There is no server license for Acrobat. Besides the legal issue, Acrobat is not suitable for server use from a technical point of view.

N
nicolasg63317848Author
Participant
April 4, 2017

Many thanks for your quick answer.

Could you give me some details on the following questions:

  • Can you detail why Acrobat is not suitable for server from a technical point of view ? What would prevent us for installing and using  our application (Python code that calls Acrobat IAC API) on a Windows server ?
  • From a legal point of view, are there any ways of using the application we developed other than installing it directly on end-user computers, where Adobe Acrobat is installed ? (The application is design only for an internal use in the company, with no intention of selling or sublicensing the program)

Thank you in advance,

Best,

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
April 4, 2017

I believe your app is a non-starter in the form you describe it. You would need each individual to have Acrobat and to run the app themselves, on their own computer, for heir own benefit.


Refer to the Acrobat Developer FAQ for the few official words Adobe have ever given on this.

Informal thoughts: in general you should never consider taking an interactive tool and running on a server without checking for technical and licensing status (which you were doing, of course, this is a general note; this has been a very expensive mistake for some companies, who have ended up, for example, with bills for millions of users, being each web client). Interactive tools often expect there to be a human, to put out warning messages, or exciting adverts about new versions; to remind the user to log in; a thousand interactive things. Because of this, moving interactive apps to a service or background task means they will likely hang, either quickly, or weeks later, because there is no way to respond.

Informal license thoughts (I am not a lawyer): in the early days of Acrobat smart admins quickly realised they could put one copy of Acrobat on a server and provide PDF services to the whole company. Adobe's idea is to sell a copy per person, so the licenses quickly forbade this. Any attempt to move the services onto an individuals computer quickly fail too, unless the person is acting under manual orders.

Adobe have a separate range of server products, priced, supported, and implemented in an appropriate way. You might look into LiveCycle PDF Generator. Despite its name it includes some tools for PDF conversion to other formats.

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