Based on the Wikipedia article, as well as the license information on sourceforge, I've always belived that PDFCrator was free (as in freedom) software, licensed under the GPL. But now I am rather puzled after I found a licensed called the "AFPL license" included in the install, and this FAQ: http://en.pdfforge.org/content/pdfcreator-really-free
The AFPL license is not a free software license as it clearly doesn't grant the user freedom to sell the software. My question is what parts of PDFCreator is under this non-free license, and can these parts be removed without braking the software? Or to put it in other words: What parts of PDFCreator are definitely free software?
I would like to be able to run the program for any purpose, to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what I wish; to redistribute copies (with or without charge), improve the program, and release my improvements to the public.
If the software doesn't currently give me these freedoms, I would like to find out whether I can take out the non-free parts and, if neccessary, replace them with free parts.
And if PDFCreator is only partially free software, I think people should stop refering to it as free software.
PDFCreator is two things at the same time: it is a software package consisting of many parts (i.e. GhostScrpt, printer drivers etc.) and our main programming work, the glue between the windows printing system and Ghostscript. The latter is released under the terms of the GPL. Other parts that do not come from us, are not. Specially, the RedMon printer driver from the Ghostscript package is released under the AFPL (and it is their license as well). We have asked the author if he could release it under the GPL, but did not get an answer so far. So we would have to replace it, which would take a lot of time.
But coming to your list of things you "want" to do: Only selling PDFCreator is not possible at the moment, so I would still call it free sotware, as it grants you a lot of freedom, including modifying it etc. You are also free to program a RedMon replacement to further improve PDFCreators free software status ;-)
I also find the licensing confusing, as the stated intention on your web site does not seem to fit with your stated GPL licensing. You state:
"And the best: PDFCreator is free, even for commercial use! It is Open Source and released under the Terms of the GNU General Public License."
Now, to use the COM or .Net software interface, we are essentially linking to your software to use it as library code. There is a big difference between linking to library code which is licensed under GPL, and a library licensed under LGPL.
Your stated intention "even for commercial use" would be cool and groovy, if you had given your (really quite excellent) product the LGPL license, but the common understanding of the two licenses goes kind of like this...
"When code licensed under the GPL is combined or linked with any other code, that code must also then be licensed under the GPL. In effect, this license demands that any code combined with GPL'd code falls under the GPL itself.
Code licensed under the LGPL can be dynamically or statically linked to any other code, regardless of its license, as long as users are allowed to run debuggers on the combined program. In effect, this license recognizes kind of a boundary between the LGPL'd code and the code that is linked to it. "
So while I would love to implement PDFCreator as a .Net library to add some magic behind my software, it would seem to be a legal nightmare under your currently stated licensing term.
Maybe you should amend your "PDFCreator is free, even for commercial use!" statement to clarify "free" to use as stand-alone software, but not "free" to use as a dynamically linked library (COM, .Net etc).
partially, you are right. The text refers to PDFCreators main function as standalone application.
If you want to have a commercial application using PDFCreator, there are currently more obstacles: the printer driver is released as AFPL by the Ghostscript people, which completely forbids selling it or charging money for distributing it.
I you use PDFCreator to spice up a software you are using in your company, then we can give you a permission to use PDFCreator without releasing your software as GPL.
As PDFCreator uses Ghostscript which is GPL software, it is a bit tricky not to be GPL licensed software. Even LGPL could be a problem, if I recall it right.
We do not like the current situation as well and hope to be able to improve this in future.
I am trying to determine which licenses apply to our use of the software, and would be grateful for your advice. Our software uses the pdfcreator class (cstart method) to print a document to the PDF printer and save this.
Our software is a commercial application that is paid for, but we do not intend to distribute PDFCreator, we would advise customers that it can be used as an option.
Looking at the licenses, it appears that the only license that wouldn't allow this use is the pdfforge FairPlay License, which states "Using the software in commercial applications, whether used directly or linked into the application, requires seperate licensing".
Please can you confirm that our use does not involve this license, and is compliant with the other licenses.
We are intending to use pdfCreator to convert ps file(created through another application) to pdf inside our commercial application. This would be provided as an additonal option.
"If you use PDFCreator to spice up a software you are using in your company, then we can give you a permission to use PDFCreator without releasing your software as GPL."
Please let us know how to get the permission to include pdfCreator.exe in our commercial application