I looked up iText's licensing while comparing Java PDF libraries. It is a capable commercial PDF toolkit, but the license is not a simple permissive grant. I did not add the dependency or try the API.
- What worked
- Commercial-license positioning was clear enough to drop it quickly in favor of an Apache-licensed in-process library.
- What got in the way
- A commercial license was the wrong fit for an internal extractor that had to ship with no license fee and no vendor review.