Aladdin Free Public License
Latest version9
PublisherAladdin Enterprises
PublishedSeptember 18, 2000 (2000-09-18)
SPDX identifierAladdin
Debian FSG compatibleNo
FSF approvedNo[1]
OSI approvedNo
GPL compatibleNo

The Aladdin Free Public License, abbreviated AFPL, is a license written by L. Peter Deutsch for his Ghostscript PostScript language interpreter.

History

The license was derived from the GNU General Public License, but differs on two key points:

Deutsch chose to include a commercial restriction in the AFPL based on his observation of people including Ghostscript in commercial products without full license compliance.[2] Recent versions of Ghostscript are not licensed under the AFPL.[3]

Despite the name, the Free Software Foundation does not consider the AFPL a free software license,[1] neither the OSI consider it an open-source license, nor does it fall under the Copyfree Standard definition.[4] The AFPL can be considered a source-available license.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Licenses - Free Software Foundation". Archived from the original on January 13, 2009. Retrieved January 5, 2009.
  2. ^ Stig Hackvän (October 1998). "L. Peter Deutsch in conversation with Stig Hackvän". Dr Dobb's Journal. CMP Media LLC. Archived from the original (CD-ROM) on October 13, 2004. Retrieved July 21, 2007. As you recall, I promised Stallman that I would continue to distribute Ghostscript with the GNU license. But I saw a number of companies bundling Ghostscript with commercial products while just barely complying with the letter of the GNU license, so I decided that I did not want to make Ghostscript as available for commercial distribution as it would be with the GNU license.
  3. ^ "Ghostscript, Ghostview and GSview". Archived from the original on June 30, 2007. Retrieved July 21, 2007.
  4. ^ Copyfree Standard Definition

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