AGPL commercial use

PDFCreator
1

Hi there,

according to Artifex’s licensing information, you’re only free to use Ghostscript (which PDFcreator is based on) within your corporation. It’s not allowed to send PDFs to other corporate users:
http://artifex.com/licensing/

  • Use Ghostscript to translate old PostScript files into PDF files for use in generating internal reports or documents (within organization).
  • Use of Ghostscript for research and education purposes (e.g., developing a prototype for a college computer science project) that are not distributed to third parties for additional use.
  • Use Ghostscript within an IT department for internal uses only.

Could you update your FAQ please that it’s not allowed to send the PDFs created by PDFcreator to other corporations without having a license by Artifex if you’re a corporate user? This might create huge legal problems to many users. I can’t use PDFcreator, since the fee for Artifex Ghostscript is unpayable high (more expensive than Acrobat).

Could you please give a short statement?

Best regards,
Lars-Daniel

2

Hi,

there is no legal issue with sending PDFs created by PDFCreator to people outside your organisation.

Best regards

Robin

3

Are you sure? The quote from the license says “internal use only”.

4

While I am not a lawyer and license terms can be quite complicated,the quote refers to “converting old PostScript files” and might only apply under additional conditions (e.g. if you compile Ghostscript into your own binary).
The link itself says it only provides basic guidelines and can’t be used as proper legal advice.
For 100% accurate legal advice you will need to ask a lawyer, but I can’t imagine the kind of usage you describe is prohibited.
I think the main question is, will you (like us) be required to make your source code public or not.
“Bottom line, if you distribute our software, or make the functionality of the software available to users interacting with it remotely through a computer network, you must share your source code.”