[Scribus] ghostscript-esp vs. ghostscript-afpl vs. ghostscript-gnu

[Christoph Schäfer]

Hi Sebastian,

ghostscript licensing is a bit tricky. Here's the short version:

- GNU/GPL ghostscript: the manufacturer of gs releases older versions 
under the GPL on a regular basis. I suppose you know the GPL, so I won't 
explain.

- AFPL ghostscript: recent versions are released under two different 
licenses. One of them is the Aladdin Free Public License (AFPL), which 
is *not* GPL compliant. You have permission to distribute the software 
in binary or source, as long as you do not charge *any* fees for it. 
That's the problem for most Linux distributors as their distros are 
commercial products. As a consequence, most commercial Linux are shipped 
with out-of-date GPL ghostscript.

- Artifex Ghostscript: If you want to distribute a recent version of gs, 
you need a commercial licence from Artifex. Most Linux distributors 
can't or don't want to spend the money for an Artifex licence.

For more infos, have a look here: http://www.artifex.com/licensing/index.htm

Which gs is best for use in scribus? Probably the latest and greatest, 
but for now, 8.15 will suffice. I rember Peter Linell or Craig Bradney 
writing that future versions of scribus will require gs 8.5x to take 
advantage of new Postscript/PDF features. But I think that's a question 
for the developers to answer.

Christoph