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- <title>Conditions to distribute Ghostscript in a commercial context</title>
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- <h1>Conditions on distributing Ghostscript in a commercial context</h1>
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- <!-- [1.2 begin table of contents] ========================================= -->
- <h2>Table of contents</h2>
- <ul>
- <li><a href="#Free_version">The use of the public-access "free" version of Ghostscript</a>
- <li><a href="#GPL">The GNU General Public License (GPL)</a>
- </ul>
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- <p>
- This document sets forth the conditions under which Ghostscript may be
- distributed in a commercial context: under a written license from <a
- href="#Artifex">Artifex Software</a> Inc., the copyright holder's exclusive
- commercial licensing partner, or under certain other very limited
- conditions.
- <p>For other information, see the <a href="Readme.htm">Ghostscript
- overview</a>.
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- <hr>
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- <h2><a name="Free_version"></a>Use of the public-access "free"
- version of Ghostscript</h2>
- <p>
- Ghostscript is a copyrighted work whose copyright is owned by artofcode LLC.
- Some versions of Ghostscript are distributed freely under the name AFPL
- Ghostscript or (for older versions) Aladdin Ghostscript; these versions are
- always distributed with a license, called the <a href="Public.htm">Aladdin
- Free Public License</a> (also known as the AFPL), which permits AFPL
- Ghostscript to be redistributed freely under certain conditions. These
- conditions will almost always be met easily by individuals in their personal
- use of AFPL Ghostscript. AFPL Ghostscript may be <em>used</em> freely,
- including by commercial entities for evaluation or unsupported internal use.
- However, <em>distribution</em> for commercial purposes of Ghostscript, or
- anything containing or derived from Ghostscript in whole or in part,
- generally requires a written commercial license from <a
- href="#Artifex">Artifex Software Inc.</a>, the sole entity authorized by the
- copyright holder to grant such licenses. More specifically, the AFPL
- states:
- <blockquote>
- Distribution of the Program or any work based on the Program by a
- commercial organization to any third party is prohibited if any payment is
- made in connection with such distribution, whether directly (as in payment
- for a copy of the Program) or indirectly (as in payment for some service
- related to the Program, or payment for some product or service that
- includes a copy of the Program "without charge"; these are only examples,
- and not an exhaustive enumeration of prohibited activities). However, the
- following methods of distribution involving payment shall not in and of
- themselves be a violation of this restriction:
- <dl compact>
- <dt>(i)<dd>Posting the Program on a public access information storage and
- retrieval service for which a fee is received for retrieving information
- (such as an on-line service), provided that the fee is not
- content-dependent (i.e., the fee would be the same for retrieving the same
- volume of information consisting of random data).
- <dt>(ii)<dd>Distributing the Program on a CD-ROM, provided that the files
- containing the Program are reproduced entirely and verbatim on such CD-ROM,
- and provided further that all information on such CD-ROM be redistributable
- for non-commercial purposes without charge.
- </dl>
- </blockquote>
- <p>
- The intent of the exception provided in clause (i) is to allow commercial
- organizations operating an FTP server or a bulletin board to distribute
- AFPL Ghostscript freely from it, provided that:
- <dl compact>
- <dt>(1)<dd>the organization complies with the other provisions of the
- AFPL, which include among other things a requirement to distribute the
- full source code of AFPL Ghostscript and of any derived work, and to
- distribute the AFPL itself along with AFPL Ghostscript;
- <dt>(2)<dd>the only charge for downloading AFPL Ghostscript is a charge
- based on the distribution service and not one based on the content of the
- information being retrieved (i.e., the charge would be the same for
- retrieving a random collection of bits of the same size);
- <dt>(3)<dd>the server or BBS is accessible to the general public, i.e.,
- the phone number or IP address is not kept secret, and anyone may obtain
- access to the information (possibly by paying a subscription or access fee
- that is not dependent on or related to purchasing anything else).
- </dl>
- <p>
- Similarly, the exception in clause (ii) is intended to allow inclusion of
- AFPL Ghostscript on "freeware" CD-ROMs that contain only material that
- is in the public domain, or is freely redistributable provided only that a
- copyright notice is retained (such as the Independent JPEG Group
- libraries), or is distributed under some other kind of license allowing
- free redistribution such as the GNU
- <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">General Public License</a>.
- <p>
- If you want to distribute software in a commercial context that
- incorporates Ghostscript and you do <em>not</em> want to meet these
- conditions, you should contact <a href="#Artifex">Artifex Software</a> to
- find out about commercial licensing. Commercial licenses involve a
- (negotiated) payment, and include support and other benefits. These are
- the only ways you legally can distribute Ghostscript or anything containing
- Ghostscript: either by distributing AFPL Ghostscript under the
- requirements of the AFPL, or by getting a commercial license from Artifex
- Software.
- <p>
- <a name="Artifex"></a>For commercial licensing, please contact:
- <blockquote><address>
- Licensing Information<br>
- Artifex Software Inc.<br>
- 454 Las Gallinas Ave., suite 108<br>
- San Rafael, CA 94903 U.S.A.<br>
- +1-415-492-9861 telephone<br>
- +1-415-492-9862 fax<br>
- <a href="mailto:info@artifex.com">info@artifex.com</a><br>
- <a href="http://www.artifex.com/">http://www.artifex.com/</a>
- </address></blockquote>
- <p>
- If you have questions about the information in this document, please
- contact:
- <blockquote><address>
- artofcode LLC<br>
- 940 Tyler St. Studio 6<br>
- Benicia CA 94510 U.S.A.<br>
- +1-707-746-6398 fax<br>
- <a href="mailto:raph@artofcode.com">raph@artofcode.com</a><br>
- <a href="http://www.ghostscript.com/">http://www.ghostscript.com/</a>
- </address></blockquote>
- <h2><a name="GPL"></a>The GNU General Public License (GPL)</h2>
- <p>
- Older versions of Ghostscript (versions of 5.50 and previous) were
- distributed with a license called the GNU
- <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">General Public License</a>
- (also known as the "GNU License", the "GPL", or "copyleft"), which
- allowed distribution with commercial products under certain conditions.
- The copyright holder may choose to distribute other versions of Ghostscript
- with the GPL in the future; however, these versions will be identified as
- "GNU Ghostscript." The remainder of this section applies only to versions
- identified explicitly as GNU Ghostscript versions; the generic name
- Ghostscript, when applied to versions above 4.03, refers to AFPL
- Ghostscript, which is governed by the Aladdin Free Public License, not the
- GPL.
- <p>
- The full GPL is included under the name
- <b><tt>COPYING</tt></b> in the GNU Ghostscript fileset, and
- can also be obtained directly from the Free Software Foundation:
- <blockquote><address><a name="FSF_address"></a>
- Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF)<br>
- 59 Temple Place, Suite 330<br>
- Boston, MA 02111-1307 U.S.A.<br>
- +1-617-542-5942 telephone<br>
- +1-617-542-2652 fax (including Japan):<br>
- <a href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org">gnu@gnu.org</a><br>
- <a href="http://www.gnu.org/">http://www.gnu.org/</a>
- </address></blockquote>
- <p>
- or in Japan by free dial fax:
- <blockquote><address>
- 0031-13-2473 (KDD)<br>
- 0066-3382-0158 (IDC)
- </address></blockquote>
- <p>
- The GPL gotten directly from the FSF or the contents of the
- <b><tt>COPYING</tt></b> file are authoritative, but for those
- unfamiliar with the GPL, we now summarize its provisions.
- <dl compact>
- <dt>1.<dd>Anyone may copy and distribute GNU Ghostscript (both source and
- object code), but they must distribute the source code as well as the
- object code (or, if they distribute only the object code, they must
- include an offer in writing to provide the source code at no more than
- reproduction cost), keep all copyright and other notices, and include the
- GPL with the copies. (Note that this allows anyone receiving such a copy
- to distribute it freely as well.)
- <dt>2.<dd>Anyone may modify GNU Ghostscript, but the provisions of (1)
- apply to modified or derived works as well.
- <dt>3.<dd>GNU Ghostscript may be "aggregated" with another program; in
- this case, (1) and (2) do not apply to the other program, but only to GNU
- Ghostscript.
- </dl>
- <p>
- Provision (1) makes it much harder to have a commercial business based only
- on selling copies of GNU Ghostscript (as distributed with the GPL) or
- products that contain GNU Ghostscript, since any customer is free to make
- as many copies as they want for any purpose. Provision (2) effectively
- prevents the development of proprietary commercial products that
- incorporate GNU Ghostscript without a commercial license as a part, since
- these are "derived works" in the legal sense.
- <p>
- Questions have arisen at times in particular cases regarding provision (3)
- as to whether GNU Ghostscript is "aggregated" with other parts of a
- commercial product, or whether the product has become a "derived work."
- Normally, combining GNU Ghostscript with another piece of software creates
- a "derived work"; we consider GNU Ghostscript to be "aggregated" with
- another piece of software, which we will refer to as "the application",
- only if all of the following conditions are met:
- <ul>
- <li> The code and documentation for GNU Ghostscript are physically
- separated from the code and documentation for the application. For
- electronic form, it is both necessary and sufficient to put the GNU
- Ghostscript code and documentation in their own directory tree(s).
- <li> GNU Ghostscript, as delivered with the application, is usable
- independently of the application. More precisely, if a user deletes from
- the computer system all files delivered with the application except those
- in the GNU Ghostscript directories, the user will still be able to use GNU
- Ghostscript as described in GNU Ghostscript's documentation. Among other
- things, this requires that GNU Ghostscript not call any routines in the
- application, and not require any data or other files supplied as part of
- the application.
- <li> The application calls GNU Ghostscript in a way that allows an ordinary
- user to substitute another program for GNU Ghostscript. (Typically this
- requires use of a shell script or batch file, or a system call like
- "<b><tt>exec</tt></b>".) More precisely, if the user deletes from the
- computer system all the files in the GNU Ghostscript directories, and
- replaces the GNU Ghostscript executable with another program with the same
- name and conforming to the same documentation, the application will
- continue to work with it. One implication of this is that the GNU
- Ghostscript documentation must specify all properties of GNU Ghostscript on
- which the application relies; for example, if GNU Ghostscript has been
- modified by the addition of command line switches or language elements such
- as new operators, the documentation must describe any such additions that
- the application uses.
- <li> The conditions of the GPL are met with respect to GNU Ghostscript,
- including the requirement for propagation of the GPL and the requirement
- for delivering (or an offer to deliver) source code.
- </ul>
- <p>
- Regarding this last point, the GPL clearly intends that if the distributor
- only offers to provide the GNU Ghostscript source code (as opposed to
- actually distributing the source code with every copy of the application),
- then they must deliver the source code in a timely way to anyone
- requesting it.
- <p>
- The GPL makes it clear that if someone receives GNU Ghostscript only in
- its GPL-licensed form, they only have a right to distribute it if they
- comply with the GPL. artofcode LLC, as the copyright holder, takes
- this requirement very seriously, and will, if necessary, take legal action
- to ensure that anyone distributing GNU Ghostscript with the GPL complies
- with the conditions set forth above.
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- <hr>
- <p>
- <small>Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998 Aladdin Enterprises.
- All rights reserved.</small>
- <p>
- <small>This file is part of AFPL Ghostscript. See the <a
- href="Public.htm">Aladdin Free Public License</a> (the "License") for full
- details of the terms of using, copying, modifying, and redistributing AFPL
- Ghostscript.</small>
- <p>
- <small>Ghostscript version 7.04, 31 January 2002
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