GNU and Ghostscript part ways

[Posted May 21, 2003 by corbet]

The recently announced GNU Ghostscript 7.07 release will be the last. GNU Ghostscript - a free PostScript and PDF interpreter which lurks at the core of free print systems worldwide - is the result of several years worth of cooperation between its developers and the Free Software Foundation. Disagreements over the best way to create free software have brought an end to that cooperation - and to GNU Ghostscript. Fortunately, users of GPL-licensed Ghostscript should see little, if any, change.

Many companies have tried innovative licensing schemes as a way of creating free software while making enough money to pay their programmers. Ghostscript works with a variant of the "escrow" approach. New Ghostscript developments are released under the Aladdin Free Public License (AFPL), which is not a free license. It gives users the right to use, modify, and distribute copies of AFPL Ghostscript - with an important restriction:

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).

In other words, the Ghostscript copyright holder (artofcode LLC) reserves the right to make money from the distribution of Ghostscript. If you want to distribute AFPL Ghostscript as part of a commercial product (i.e. inside a printer), you must come to an agreement with Artifex Software, which handles these deals.

After one year has passed, however, the AFPL-licensed code is re-released under the GPL as (until now) GNU Ghostscript. Of course, by that time a new batch of code will be just beginning its time under the AFPL. The end result is the the GPL version is always a bit old. It is, however, clearly good enough for most users; most Ghostscript users probably never bother to download and install the AFPL version, even though they have the right to do so.

According to the Free Software Foundation's Bradley Kuhn, the FSF, while accepting the GNU Ghostscript releases, has never been entirely comfortable with the method by which they are produced. There is, he says, "nothing important enough to be worth sacrificing freedom for." So the non-free Ghostscript releases have always gone against FSF principles - even if, in the end, it results in a much improved free Ghostscript. (The FSF also is not convinced that the Ghostscript model results in improved free releases; Mr. Kuhn cites the MySQL approach as, perhaps, a better way of doing things).

The difference in viewpoints between the FSF and the Ghostscript team have resulted in two issues which have, at this point, brought about the end of the GNU Ghostscript releases. The first is the FSF's insistence that nothing in GNU Ghostscript can even mention that AFPL Ghostscript exists. This is not a new situation - see this note from Richard Stallman in response to the GNU Ghostscript 5.10 release announcement back in 1998. That announcement mentioned AFPL Ghostscript 5.50, which was set to become GNU Ghostscript 5.50 several months later; this mention violated the FSF's rules on information control and had to be corrected. More recently, Mr. Stallman told the Ghostscript developers that there were "major and pervasive problems" with the GNU Ghostscript release.

The most pervasive problem is that the GPL notices in every source file are not the standard ones, and they refer to a web site that describes non-free software.

The Ghostscript team did comply with the FSF's wishes, and changed the copyright notices for the 7.07 release.

The other issue has to do with bug tracking systems. The Ghostscript team wants to use a single, unified bug tracker for both versions of the code. Among other things, a common bug database makes it easy to determine whether bugs reported in GNU Ghostscript have been fixed in the AFPL version; in such cases, according to Ghostscript maintainer Raph Levien, the bug fixes are always backported to the GNU version. The FSF was unwilling to agree to a single bug tracking system, however. They would like to see a real development community form around the GPL version of the code and a bug tracking system which includes the AFPL version, in their opinion, works against that goal. The Ghostscript team, unwilling to deal with the hassles of maintaining two separate bug tracking systems, decided to cease making GNU Ghostscript releases.

Ghostscript users may not notice the difference, however. Given that each side continues to express great respect for the other and the two remain on friendly terms, there is a real possibility that things could yet be worked out in the future. In the mean time, as Mr. Levien told us: "...while we are discontinuing the GNU affiliation, our commitment to GPL releases of Ghostscript is as strong as ever." GNU Ghostscript will, in the future, bear a name like "GPL Ghostscript," and it will not be considered as part of the body of GNU code. But the GPL-licensed Ghostscript releases - a valuable gift of high-quality code - will continue.

GNU and Ghostscript part ways

Posted May 22, 2003 1:18 UTC (Thu) by Hawke (guest, #6978) [Link]

The use of "i.e." should have been "e.g."

i.e. stands for "id est", and means "that is". As used in the article, it would imply that the only possible commercial distribution of AFPL Ghostscript is inside a printer.

e.g. stands for "exempli gratia", and means "for example" and implies that inside a printer is merely one of the many possibilities for commercial distribution of AFPL Ghostscript.

Move along

Posted May 22, 2003 3:13 UTC (Thu) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link] (3 responses)

In other words: move along, nothing to see here. Just a name change. It's not like GNU Ghostscript was ever anything more than a rebranded Aladdin Ghostscript anyway. Now Aladdin Ghostscript will be rebranded as something else instead.

(Then again, "Mozilla Firebird" was just a name change too.)

Move along

Posted May 22, 2003 16:56 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (1 responses)

See, now, this was what *I* thought, too.

Move along

Posted May 26, 2003 5:18 UTC (Mon) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

See, now, this was what *I* thought, too.

Heh. So, unlike so many things, this one isn't just you.

Move along

Posted May 24, 2003 1:49 UTC (Sat) by torsten (guest, #4137) [Link]

It's not like GNU Ghostscript was ever anything more than a rebranded Aladdin Ghostscript anyway.

So it may seem.

The latest release of ESP GhostScript, version 7.05.6, contains many drivers, enhancements, and improvements that have not been upstreamed to Aladdin.

GNU and Ghostscript part ways

Posted May 22, 2003 18:02 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

It seems to me like, while the GPL is a good fit for the free version of Ghostscript, the FSF and the GNU project never really were. It seems to me like the Ghostscript developers picked an odd method of releasing the Free versions, through an unrelated organization. These days, there are plenty of ways to distribute Free (and not-quite-Free) Software, so it doesn't really make sense to go through GNU. Even MySQL, whose model Mr. Kuhn points to as preferable, isn't a GNU project.

It would greatly simplify everybody's experience if the project were more uniform, where you have a single set of version numbers for the versions, with all of the non-bug-fix, Artifex-code-only releases older than a year licensed under the GPL and the new released only license under the AFPL. This would make it much easier for users to decide what course of action is most suitable: getting the AFPL release (if the user doesn't want to use the missing freedom anyway), waiting for the current AFPL release to be GPL, getting the current GPL release, or adding functionality to the GPL release.

GNU censorship

Posted May 22, 2003 19:55 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (3 responses)

I never knew the GNU Project had a policy of concealing the existence of non-free software.

It's an offensive policy when a commercial producer actively covers up the existence of competitive products, but this is downright strange, considering the FSF's orientation toward freedom.

GNU censorship

Posted May 23, 2003 1:10 UTC (Fri) by leandro (guest, #1460) [Link] (2 responses)

> a policy of concealing the existence of non-free software

Make it not advertising. Concealing would mean trying to hide, erase all visible traces from someone; not advertising means simply ignoring.

GNU censorship

Posted May 23, 2003 19:43 UTC (Fri) by raph (guest, #326) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm not trying to stir up flames, but I think the word "censorship" is appropriate here. Basically, it seemed to us that to be a GNU project, we had to excise all mentions of AFPL Ghostscript, including those through one or two hope of indirection, including our main Web page and our bug tracker.

I completely understand and support the idea of not using GNU distributions to advocate non-free software. We were trying to respect that, but the FSF's interpretation of "not advocating" is too similar to "not mentioning in any way" for our comfort.

So we interpreted censorship as censorship and routed around it :)

GNU censorship

Posted Aug 7, 2003 20:49 UTC (Thu) by leandro (guest, #1460) [Link]

> the FSF's interpretation of "not advocating" is too similar to "not mentioning in any way" for our comfort

Granted, you'd feel like that because your codebase is proprietary. Still I can see RMS' point: giving leads to non-free gives the impression GNU condones it, and helps perpetuate the proprietary evil as he (and me) sees it.

Thanks for keeping the GNU GPL release, but I'd rather you had not parted ways. Now I hope ESP Ghostscript florishes...