External links
- Aladdin Free Public License (broken)
- Aladdin Free Public License (MIT) (might serve as a useful substitute)
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| Latest version | 9 |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Aladdin Enterprises |
| Published | September 18, 2000 |
| SPDX identifier | Aladdin |
| Debian FSG compatible | No |
| FSF approved | No [1] |
| OSI approved | No |
| GPL compatible | No |
The Aladdin Free Public License, abbreviated AFPL, is a license written by L. Peter Deutsch for his Ghostscript PostScript language interpreter.
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.
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.
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