> Why wouldn't iText deserve your money if you were using it in your commercial product?
Because they're not even saying how much money. "Call us for a quote" usually means "Let's start the sales dance in which we try to gauge how much we can fleece you for", which also means it's not going to be a quick answer.
For me it means the software is immediately categorized as "to be considered only once all other options have been exhausted".
I agree with your feelings on this last point. I wonder how it's working out for them as I imagine it's a turn off for corporate buyers as well as lone devs and small shops.
I doubt it's a turn-off for corporate buyers in the large, but it's absolutely a turn-off for dev teams within corporations. Especially nowadays in an increasingly Agile world where everything is due 2 weeks from when you start work on it.
A developer might be quite willing to go to their manager with, "Hey, can we buy X? It will cost $Y, and save us $Z worth of time." But "Call for a quote" is a quagmire: They can't (and don't want to) negotiate prices themselves, and they also don't want to annoy their boss by causing them to spend the next 3 months being hounded by sales people.
I imagine it's a turn off for corporate buyers as well as lone devs and small shops.
The request a quote style of pricing is almost exclusively for corporate buyers. It allows them to go out to lunch and get the purchasing department involved and make management feel like an important part of the process.
It's not just a phone call, of course. If they had a concrete pricing model they could just tell you on the website.
"Call for a quote" means they expect to have their sales staff talk to your management or procurement department to negotiate a price, do a face-to-face meeting if possible, so they can see how much you're willing to pay.
nonetheless, I found their library pretty easy to use and faster compared to the competitors. Sadly due to the licensing issues, I think I won't be using it for sometime ( or ever incase quote is above and beyond expectations )
Probably yes, because seems their licensing policy is not very user-friendly or straightforward.
On their How-To-Buy Page (https://itextpdf.com/en/how-buy) the licensing model is pretty convoluted
Because they're not even saying how much money. "Call us for a quote" usually means "Let's start the sales dance in which we try to gauge how much we can fleece you for", which also means it's not going to be a quick answer.
For me it means the software is immediately categorized as "to be considered only once all other options have been exhausted".