GNU Ghostscript

GNU Ghostscript is now known as GPL Ghostscript

This page refers only to older releases that were part of the GNU project. In 2004 Ghostscript left the GNU project and the name of the Free Software releases were changed to GPL Ghostscript to reflect this.

Ghostscript is the name of a set of software that provides:

Obtaining GNU Ghostscript

Ghostscript is a copyrighted work (artofcode LLC owns the copyright); it is not shareware or in the public domain.

Versions entitled "GNU Ghostscript" are distributed with the GNU General Public License, which allows free use, and free copying and redistribution under certain conditions (including, in some cases, commercial distribution). You can always get the current version of GNU Ghostscript by Internet FTP from

ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/gnu/
or /afs/cs.wisc.edu/p/mirror/pub/mirrors/ghost/gnu/gsNNN/ghostscript-N.NN* or from any of the GNU distribution sites, such as ftp.uu.net:/systems/gnu or gatekeeper.dec.com:/pub/GNU; you can also get GNU Ghostscript on tape or CD-ROM from the Free Software Foundation.

The Ghostscript source code distribution, and the Ghostscript executable code, include the following libraries obtained from other parties:

These libraries do NOT fall under either the GNU License or the Aladdin Ghostscript Free Public License; they come with their own licenses, which also allow free use and redistribution under appropriate circumstances and which appear in the files referenced just above. These libraries are entirely original works of their respective authors, and are provided "AS IS" with NO WARRANTY and NO SUPPORT.

What platforms does Ghostscript run on?

Ghostscript is written entirely in C (with some optional assembly-language accelerators for MS-DOS platforms), with special care taken to make it run properly on systems of either byte order and of various word lengths.

GNU Ghostscript is known to run on the following platform families:

Newsgroups for GNU Ghostscript

Discussion about GNU Ghostscript and Ghostview can be found in the USENET gnu.ghostscript.bug newsgroup.

Other information on the WWW

This information was mostly obtained from the GNU Ghostscript documentation.
Last updated $Date: 2005-02-28 14:43:09 -0600 (Mon, 28 Feb 2005) $.