To use ghostscript in a commercial settings (i.e. To distribute it alongside binary code) you need to have a license. At the time of writing (September 2014) – the costs for this are rather prohibitive.

• Commercial Software License
• Ghostscript Commercial License Price

Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization or rendering of such page description language^[5] files, for the display or printing of document pages, and the conversion between PostScript and PDF files.^[6]

Features[edit]

Ghostscript can be used as a raster image processor (RIP) for raster computer printers—for instance, as an input filter of line printer daemon—or as the RIP engine behind PostScript and PDF viewers.

Ghostscript can also be used as a file format converter, such as PostScript to PDF converter. The ps2pdf conversion program, which comes with the ghostscript distribution, is described by its documentation as a 'work-alike for nearly all the functionality (but not the user interface) of Adobe's Acrobat Distiller product'.^[7] This converter is basically a thin wrapper around ghostscript's pdfwrite output device, which supports PDF/A-1 and PDF/A-2 as well as PDF/X-3 output.^[7]

Ghostscript can also serve as the back-end for PDF to raster image (png, tiff, jpeg, etc.) converter; this is often combined with a PostScript printer driver in 'virtual printer' PDF creators.^{[8][citation needed]}

As it takes the form of a language interpreter, Ghostscript can also be used as a general purpose programming environment.

Ghostscript has been ported to many operating systems, including Unix-like systems, classic Mac OS, OpenVMS, Microsoft Windows, Plan 9, MS-DOS, FreeDOS, OS/2, Atari TOS and AmigaOS.

History[edit]

Ghostscript was originally written^[9] by L. Peter Deutsch for the GNU Project, and released under the GNU General Public License in 1986. Later, Deutsch formed Aladdin Enterprises to dual-license Ghostscript also under a proprietary license with an own development fork: 'Aladdin Ghostscript' under the Aladdin Free Public License^[10] (which, despite the name, is not a free software license, as it forbids commercial distribution) and 'GNU Ghostscript' distributed with the GNU General Public License.^[11] With version 8.54 in 2006, both development branches were merged again, and dual-licensed releases were still provided.^[12][13]

Ghostscript is currently owned by Artifex Software and maintained by Artifex Software employees and the worldwide user community. According to Artifex, as of version 9.03, the commercial version of Ghostscript can no longer be freely distributed for commercial purposes without purchasing a license, though the (A)GPL variant allows commercial distribution provided all code using it is released under the (A)GPL.^[14] Artifex' point of view on 'aggregated software' was challenged in court for MuPDF.^[15][16][17]

In February 2013, Ghostscript changed its license from GPLv3 to GNU AGPL in version 9.07, ^[18][19] which raised license compatibility questions for example by Debian.^[20]

Variants and forks[edit]

• Aladdin Ghostscript 5.50 (1998-09-17) and 6.01 (2000–03-17)^[21]
• AFPL Ghostscript^[22] is Aladdin Ghostscript under the AFPL, 6.50 (2000-12-05) to 8.54 (2006-05-17), now abandoned.^[12][13]
• AGPL Ghostscript is the canonical variant available, since February 2013,^[18] under the GNU Affero General Public License which is a free software license.
• GNU Ghostscript is part of the GNU project and is now derived from GPL Ghostscript.
• GPL Ghostscript is the basis for Display Ghostscript, which adds Display PostScript functionality support.
• Ghostscript is the current commercial proprietary version licensed by Artifex Software for inclusion in closed-source products.
• Ghost Trap is a variant of GPL Ghostscript secured and sandboxed using Google Chrome's sandbox technology.
• ESP Ghostscript was a GPL Ghostscript fork for ESP's CUPS and merged with GPL Ghostscript.^[23]

Front ends[edit]

Ghostscript GUIs view PostScript or PDF files on screens, scroll, page forward, page backward, zoom text, and print page(s).

• GSview (Version 5 and 6 are now unsupported) ^[24][25][26]
• IrfanView import and display PDF files
• Inkscape import and display PDF files
• virtual printers - to create PDF files

Free fonts[edit]

There are several sets of free fonts supplied for Ghostscript, intended to be metrically compatible with common fonts attached with the PostScript standard.^{[27][28][29][30]} These include:

• 35 basic PostScript fonts contributed by URW++ Design and Development Incorporated, of Hamburg, Germany in 1996 under the GPL and AFPL.^{[31][32][33][34][35]} It is a full set fonts similar to the classic Adobe set: Bookman L (Bookman), Century Schoolbook L (New Century Schoolbook), Chancery L (Zapf Chancery), Dingbats (Zapf Dingbats), Gothic L (Avant Garde), Nimbus Mono L (Courier), Nimbus Roman No9 L (Times), Nimbus Sans L (Helvetica), Palladio L (Palatino), Standard Symbols L (Symbol), in Type1, TrueType, and OpenType formats.
• The GhostPDL package (including Ghostscript as well as companion implementations of HP PCL and Microsoft XPS) includes additional fonts under the AFPL which bars commercial use.^[30][36] It includes URW++ versions of Garamond (Garamond No. 8), Optima (URW Classico), Arial (A030), Antique Olive, and Univers (U001), Clarendon,^[a]Coronet, Letter Gothic, as well as URW Mauritius^[b] and a modified form of Albertus known as A028. Combined with the base set, they represent a little more than half of the standard PostScript 3 font complement.
• A miscellaneous set including Cyrillic, kana, and fonts derived from the free Hershey fonts, with improvements by Thomas Wolff (such as adding accented characters).

The Ghostscript fonts were developed in the PostScript Type 1 format but have been converted into the TrueType format,^[31][30] usable by most current software, and are popularly used within the open-source community. The Garamond font has additionally been improved upon.^[37] URW's core 35 fonts have been subsequently incorporated into GNU FreeFont and TeX Gyre.^[38]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

1. ^Bold Condensed
2. ^similar in style to the Postscript Marigold font but older

References[edit]

1. ^'Documentation'. ghostscript.com. July 10, 2002.
2. ^'History of Ghostscript versions 1.n'. Retrieved 2007-04-10.
3. ^'GPL Ghostscript 9'. Ghostscript. Artifex Software, Inc. 2016-11-20. Retrieved 2016-09-26.
4. ^'Overview of Ghostscript'. ghostscript.com.
5. ^'Ghostscript and the PostScript language'. ghostscript.com.
6. ^Ingo, Henrik (1 August 2006). 'Open Life: The Philosophy of Open Source'. Lulu.com – via Google Books.
7. ^ ^ab'ps2pdf: PostScript-to-PDF converter'. Retrieved 2014-08-03.
8. ^'Creating a Free PDF Writer Using Ghostscript'. www.stat.tamu.edu. Retrieved 2017-06-02.
9. ^'Recent changes in Ghostscript'. pages.cs.wisc.edu.
10. ^Ghostscript 5.50 license (mirror)
11. ^'Background information for new users of Ghostscript'. pages.cs.wisc.edu.
12. ^ ^ab'Advogato: Blog for raph'. 29 June 2017. Archived from the original on 29 June 2017.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
13. ^ ^abGhostscript leading edge is now GPL! Posted 7 Jun 2006 by raph 'I have some great news to report. The leading edge of Ghostscript development is now under GPL license, as is the latest release, Ghostscript 8.54.'
14. ^Licensing Information IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT DISTRIBUTING SOFTWARE FROM ARTIFEX 'If your application, including all of its source code, is licensed to the public under the GNU GPL, you are authorized to ship GPL Ghostscript with your application under the terms of the GPL license agreement. You do not need a commercial license from Artifex.' (archived)
15. ^Copyright infringement lawsuit filed against palm on webosnation.com
16. ^'Complaint for Copyright Infringement'(PDF). p.4 ¶15, p.6 ¶27. Retrieved May 3, 2013.
17. ^'Notice of Voluntary Dismissal With Prejudice'(PDF). Retrieved May 3, 2013.
18. ^ ^ab'Ghostscript 9.07 and GhostPDL 9.07'.(dead url, archiv.is backup available)
19. ^'Licensing Information'. Retrieved 2014-05-08.
20. ^'Re: Ghostscript licensing changed to AGPL'. lists.debian.org.
21. ^'Ghostscript'. pages.cs.wisc.edu.
22. ^'Obtaining AFPL Ghostscript 8.54'. pages.cs.wisc.edu.
23. ^'Article #484: The Grand Unified Ghostscript Officially Released: GPL Ghostscript 8.60 - Common UNIX Printing System'. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27.
24. ^http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
25. ^http://www.ghostgum.com.au/software/gsview.htm
26. ^https://gsview.com
27. ^'Debian package - gsfonts'. Retrieved 2010-04-21.
28. ^'Fonts and font facilities supplied with Ghostscript'. Retrieved 2010-04-21.
29. ^'Linux fonts (mostly X11)'. 2009-08-15. Retrieved 2010-04-21.
30. ^ ^abc'doc/pcl/urwfonts (URW fonts in TTF format)'. ghostscript doc. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
31. ^ ^abArtifexSoftware. 'urw-base35-fonts'. GitHub. Retrieved 25 March 2018.
32. ^Finally! Good-quality free (GPL) basic-35 PostScript Type 1 fonts., archived from the original on 2002-10-23, retrieved 2010-05-06
33. ^Finally! Good-quality free (GPL) basic-35 PostScript Type 1 fonts.(TXT), retrieved 2010-05-06
34. ^'Fonts and TeX'. 2009-12-19. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
35. ^Five years after: Report on international TEX font projects(PDF), 2007, retrieved 2010-05-06
36. ^'GhostPDL License'. ghostscript doc. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
37. ^Bisson, Gaetan. 'URW Garamond ttf conversions'. Retrieved 18 August 2015.
38. ^'The New Font Project : TEX Gyre'(PDF). Tug.org. Retrieved 2015-06-12.

External links[edit]

• Ghostscript/GhostPDL binaries download page at Github (cross-platform, this site is actively maintained)
• GPL Ghostscript binaries download page at SourceForge (cross-platform, this site is no longer actively maintained)

I was working on a project. In which a user can upload PDF and convert it into images and So that i have used GhostScript dll (gsdll32.dll). Now in my application i want to charge from users as monthly subscription so that i can provide them more features.

But i neither have any knowledge about the licencing terms nor about ghostscript tearms & conditions.So do i need to purchase any licence regarding Or is there any other free C# library, that can be used for pdf processing, which i can use in a commercial applicatoni without acquiring any licence ?

Well i am preferring any free c# library for regarding (Premium Saas or direct application selling).

Thank youIf anyone having real time experience regarding above, Please help me out.

closed as off-topic by shree.pat18, bummi, Kevin Brown, matthias_h, C4 - TravisJan 31 '15 at 5:15

This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:

• 'Questions asking us to recommend or find a book, tool, software library, tutorial or other off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.' – shree.pat18, C4 - Travis

Commercial Software License

1 Answer

Ghostscript Commercial License Price

_{I am not a lawyer. You should get one, if you are concerned about possible legal issues.}

Does Commercial use of GhostScript as Saas needs a licence?

Well, first of all, you need a license to use any software (except one, which is public domain) in any way.

As for Ghostscript at the moment Artifex offers it under: a) GNU Affero GPL, which is license for free/libre software; b) non-free/proprietary license, which Artifex calls a ‘commercial license’. But it’s called ‘commercial’ because, I guess, Atrifex makes money on it, definitely not because that is only way for you to use Ghostscript for profit.

Any free software license, including GNU AGPL, by definition gives you, once you obtain a copy of software, right to use it for commercial purposes, including selling it; but you, of course, have to strictly follow the terms of that license. The key point of GNU AGPL is that it is a strong copyleft license. That means, that you have to make your entire software product, which is based on Ghostscript, subject of GNU AGPL, which in turn put you under obligation to provide to your customers (including customers of SaaS) correspondent sources for your product and to grant them permissions to (0) use it in any purpose, (1) redistribute it, (2) modify it and (3) distribute modifications; all of that in accordance with GNU AGPL.

So no, you have not obtain ‘commercial license’ from Artifex to use Ghostscript in your app. But if are not going to provide these four freedoms to your users, then yes, you’d better contact Artifex and ask them a price.

By the way, Artifex is not pioneer of that practice of copyleft/proprietary bi-licensing, it is well-known for years.

As for why I said ‘at the moment’. Not so long ago, prior to version 9.06 (inclusive), free/libre license of Ghostscript was not GNU Affero GPL, but ordinary GNU GPL (see license files doc/COPYING in source archives as a proof), which is a bit more permissive – it does not oblige you to grant any permissions to users that interact with your software via client-server protocol over a network but does not possess a copy (that’s what you mean by ’SaaS’, I guess). Users who bought a copy still have to obtain it under GNU GPL.

Version 9.06 is definitely not too old – is supplied now in testing version of Debian. You might consider using it.

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