Good news: Ghostscript goes GPL

[KATO Tsuguru]

On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 13:18:36 +0200
Matthias Andree <matthias.andree at gmx.de> wrote:

> Artifex have released Ghostscript 8.54 under the GPL, essentially giving
> up their split licensing model and the time lag of a year for the GPL
> version.

It seems there is no official announcement about licensing issue.
Bugfix release probably shouldn't be affected by "time lag of a year"
rule.

> However, a unification of existing ghostscript-{afpl,gpl,gnu} ports into
> one (and its -nox11 slave port) may reduce the number of conflicts on
> end users's systems.

Porting third-party printer driver between Ghostscript version is not
so easy because driver API is frequently modified. And then, since
there is currently no way to add CUPS raster driver into 8.5x which
requires massive patching to Ghostscript source, we should have to
append new variant of Ghostscript port for 8.1x if upgrading
ghostscipt-gpl port to 8.5x.

In addition, current ghostscipt-gnu 7.0x is remained almost only for
east-asian user because 8.1x/8.5x lack some important feature to
handle their fonts.