Re: GPL question

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Mike Cunningham <mike.cunningham@ait.co.uk>

> I work for a company  which sells a proprietary closed-source call centre
> application. We are looking to write a central printing server
> component which would [hopefully] make use of Ghostscript. I
> understand that we would need to release the printing server under
> the GPL and we have no problem with doing that.

Not necessarily. If your printing saver simply generates postscript
output, and Ghostscript is just one of several configurable options
for what to do with the output, I do not think that the copyright for
Ghostscript migrates to the postscript creator. After all, there do
exists other quite legitimate options for handling a postscript file
than Ghostscript - not least among which is transmitting it to a
genuine PostScript(R) printer.

> Also, is it relevant that at the moment the whole app. comes on a
> single CD?

Not if your application is clearly functional and useful without using
Ghostscript (which would be the case if it offered to pipe its output
directly to the printer).

> I.e. if we added the new print server to the CD then have we just formed a
> "distribution" (as described in the license) and ...aaaaaaagh.

I think that would be "mere aggregation" as described at the end of
GPL clause 2.

-- 
Henning Makholm            "Vi skal nok ikke begynde at undervise hinanden i
                    den store regnekunst her, men jeg vil foreslå, at vi fra
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          give en beskrivelse af, hvordan man læser tallene. Tak for i dag!"