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I'm searching for a Help-System for my Java-Application. Since it may go commercial someday, I need a System that allows that, but doesn't cost anything at the moment.

I know there is always that question "What? You want to earn money with that but don't want to pay for licenses??". At the moment i'm a student without any money, so i just can't pay anything and search for available free solutions.

Until now, i found two of them:

JavaHelp - HTML Help System

PDFhelp - PDF based alternative for JavaHelp

The Problem is: JavaHelp is under GPL 2. Since i don't want to open my source, i don't want to use that. PDFhelp seems to need JPedal, a commercial PDF Library that costs a lot.

So is there a free solution which i can use for my Project? Until now, i didn't find any other. The only way was to build my own Help-System.

Martin Weber
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  • you want to use held? What exactly to you mean? Please be more specific – MaVRoSCy Mar 06 '13 at 07:08
  • I want to use a Help-System for my Application. You know, the thing that opens in most Applications if you press F1? There are several possibilities and i search for one that is free to use in my Application. – Martin Weber Mar 06 '13 at 07:30
  • btw, the GPL 2 states that `Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.` referring of course to the third party software that you are going to use. That doesn't mean that you must disclose your source!!! – MaVRoSCy Mar 06 '13 at 07:38
  • @MaVRoSCy The GPL 2 also states that: `This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General Public License instead of this License.` – Martin Weber Mar 06 '13 at 08:39

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JavaHelp is under GPL 2. But it includes the ClassPathException, which means that i'm free to use it without opening my soure, as long as i only include the library/jar-file and don't modify it.

Martin Weber
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