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Licensing

This page lists the licences that apply to PdfPinata and to the packages it brings into your application. It states facts from the packages and the repository. It is not legal advice. If you need to know what a licence allows in your situation, read the licence text or ask a lawyer.

PdfPinata​

PdfPinata and PinataLayout are released under the MIT License. The licence text is in LICENSE.md, and every one of the nine NuGet packages includes that file.

The licence carries three copyright lines, because PdfPinata continues earlier work:

  • Copyright (c) 2026 PdfPinata
  • Copyright (c) 2005-2007 empira Software GmbH, Cologne (Germany), the authors of PDFsharp and MigraDoc
  • Modified work Copyright (c) 2016 David Dunscombe

Many source files also carry empira's copyright notice in their header. The MIT License requires that the copyright notice and the permission notice are included in all copies or substantial portions of the software.

Dependencies of each package​

This table lists the third-party packages that each PdfPinata package depends on at run time, and their licences as their NuGet packages declare them.

PdfPinata packageDepends onLicence
PdfPinataSharpZipLib 1.4.2MIT
PdfPinata.SkiaSkiaSharp, and its native asset packagesMIT
PdfPinata.ImageSharpSixLabors.ImageSharp 2.1.13 or later 2.1 versionsApache-2.0
SixLabors.Fonts 1.0.1Apache-2.0
PdfPinata.HarfBuzzHarfBuzzSharp, and its native asset packagesMIT
PdfPinata.SigningSystem.Security.Cryptography.PkcsMIT
PdfPinata.ChartingNone
PdfPinata.EInvoiceNone
PinataLayout.DocumentObjectModelNone
PinataLayout.RenderingNone

Every package in the table also depends on PdfPinata, and some depend on other PdfPinata packages. All of those are MIT.

The SkiaSharp, HarfBuzzSharp, SixLabors.ImageSharp and SixLabors.Fonts packages ask you to accept their licence when you install them.

The PdfPinata package also contains a 456-byte sRGB colour profile, which it gives to PDF/A documents that name no profile of their own. The profile comes from the Compact ICC Profiles collection by Clinton Ingram and is released to the public domain under Creative Commons CC0 1.0.

Why the ImageSharp backend stays on version 2.1​

SixLabors.ImageSharp 3.0 and later versions use the Six Labors Split License, not Apache-2.0. Version 2.1 is the last Apache-2.0 line. PdfPinata.ImageSharp therefore depends on ImageSharp versions from 2.1.13 up to, but not including, 3.0, so that installing it does not bring the newer licence into your application. SixLabors.Fonts is held at 1.0.1 for the same reason.

The limit is also technical. ImageSharp 3 is not binary compatible with 2.1, so the backend cannot run against it. Installation explains how NuGet reports the conflict.

If your application needs ImageSharp 3, use PdfPinata.Skia. It has no ImageSharp dependency, so your application can use ImageSharp 3 for its own work and under its own licence terms.

Build-time tools​

Some packages take part in the build of PdfPinata but are not dependencies of the published packages: MinVer sets version numbers, Microsoft.Sbom.Targets writes a software bill of materials, and PolySharp generates internal compatibility code for the netstandard2.1 builds. PolySharp is MIT-licensed.

Each published package contains an SPDX software bill of materials under _manifest/, which lists the dependencies it was built with.

Fonts​

The PdfPinata packages contain no font files. Your application supplies fonts, either from the operating system or from files you ship. The licence of each font is a matter between you and the font's owner. PdfPinata embeds every font it uses in the PDF it writes, and some font licences restrict embedding.

The repository contains font files in two places, and neither is published as a package:

  • The demo app, src/SampleApp/Assets/Fonts: Liberation Sans, Liberation Serif, Source Code Pro and Noto Sans Arabic.
  • The tests, src/PdfPinata.Test/Assets/Fonts: Liberation Sans, Source Code Pro, Noto Sans Arabic and Noto Sans Devanagari.

All of these fonts are released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. The licence text is in a LICENSE.txt file beside the fonts, with the copyright notice of each family. The OFL requires that its text travels with the fonts, so the demo app embeds LICENSE.txt beside the font files. If you copy these fonts into your own application, include the licence file too.