In simple English
This software helps your computer system sign electronic documents and check if existing signatures are valid. It follows strict European Union rules for legal documents. The software is free to use and maintained by the European Commission. You need a programmer to add it to your software project. It works in the background and does not have its own user interface.
What it is
Digital Signature Service (an official software library that lets programmers add electronic signature creation and validation to their own programs) is a Java toolkit supporting standard signature formats such as XAdES, CAdES, PAdES, and JAdES. It provides modules for developers to build legally compliant document signing workflows.
What it is good for
Solo builders who need to build software that signs PDF documents or XML files according to European Union legal standards. It removes the need to write complex cryptographic verification logic from scratch.
- Official open source project maintained by the European Union.
- Supports all major advanced electronic signature formats.
- Available directly from the Maven Central repository for easy integration.
- Requires Java and the Maven build tool to compile.
- Full test suite takes over an hour to run.
- No ready-to-use desktop user interface for non-programmers.
commercial PDF signing software development kits
Apache Maven
- LibreSign/libresign835 stars
An open source document signing platform with a web user interface instead of a developer library.
- smallstep/certificates9.0k stars
Issues and renews the TLS and SSH certificates that machines on a private network need, speaking the same protocol as the public free services.
- michelp/pgsodium614 stars
A PostgreSQL extension that brings libsodium's encryption functions into SQL, with a root key the database cannot read back.
- pgaudit/pgaudit1.7k stars
A PostgreSQL extension that records what was done to the database, in the database's own log.
mvn clean install -P quick-init