[tex-live] Acrobat reader on DVD???

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Sun Sep 14 11:30:08 CEST 2003


    >From what Karl was saying in a recent post we cannot have AFPL
    ghostscript on DVD because of licencing restrictions.

Whether it can be used in the main TeX Live and whether it can be
included in the ctan/ subdir are two different things, since the ctan/
subdir is a "mere aggregation" of unrelated software.  It certainly
can't be used in TL proper, because of its many restrictions; that's all
I was saying before.

So, let's examine the license in light of including it in ctan/.

http://www.ghostscript.com/doc/cvs/Public.htm says, in 2a:

    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 ...
    or indirectly  ...

Lehmann's (just for example) is a commercial organization.  Payment is
being made.  Therefore, AFPL Ghostscript cannot be included in any form,
even in the ctan/ directory.

A little bit later, distributing it on a cd with a book is also
explicitly disallowed, so including AFPL GS would cause trouble in that
regard as well.

    gs8, gv, gsview and xpdf

Gsview is also distributed under the AFPL now, at least the current
versions.  (I seem to recall Fabrice mentioning that Russell changed the
licensing terms fairly recently.)  So no gsview either.

gv and xpdf are ok, as far as I know.

k


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