Aladdin Free Public License

The Aladdin Free Public License, abbreviated AFPL, is a license written by L. Peter Deutsch

L. Peter Deutsch

L Peter Deutsch or Peter Deutsch is the founder of Aladdin Enterprises and creator of Ghostscript, a free software PostScript and PDF interpreter....

 for his Ghostscript

Ghostscript

Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format page description languages.- Features :...

 PostScript

PostScript

PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...

 language interpreter.

History

The license was derived from the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

, but differs on two key points:

• The source code
  Source code
  In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
  
   must be included with any software distribution.
• The software may not be sold, including any fees involved with distribution.

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. Recent versions of Ghostscript are not licensed under the AFPL.

Despite the name, the Free Software Foundation

Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...

 does not consider the AFPL a free software license

Free software licence

A free software licence is a software licence which grants recipients rights to modify and redistribute the software, which would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law. A free software licence grants, to the recipients, freedoms in the form of permissions to modify or distribute copyrighted work...

. and it does not fall under the Copyfree Standard Definition

External links

• Aladdin Free Public License (original text)