Bug 695212 - Please strongly consider changing license for the library part of Ghostscript to LGPL-3+
Summary: Please strongly consider changing license for the library part of Ghostscript...
Status: RESOLVED INVALID
Alias: None
Product: Ghostscript
Classification: Unclassified
Component: General (show other bugs)
Version: master
Hardware: PC Linux
: P4 normal
Assignee: Default assignee
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2014-05-05 19:03 UTC by Jonas Smedegaard
Modified: 2014-05-06 00:01 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

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Description Jonas Smedegaard 2014-05-05 19:03:06 UTC 
Ghostscript is licensed as AGPL-3+.  That's nice.

AGPL is arguably a good license for applications, to avoid a loophole in licensing when used in cloud services.

AGPL is quite problematic for other things, however, including libraries and fonts.

This post (and surrounding thread) explains in my opinon well the situation: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/07/msg00317.html
Comment 1 Chris Liddell (chrisl) 2014-05-06 00:01:01 UTC 
Given that we specifically chose GPL and then AGPL to protect against commercial uses of "GPL Ghostscript", changing the functional core to LGPL is unlikely to considered.

I'd also argue that giving one of the reasons for wanting this is because users don't want to share security patches is unlikely to further your case.