[Nix-dev] Ghostscript versions.

[Lluís Batlle i Rossell]

On Fri, Mar 09, 2012 at 04:00:21PM +0100, Lluís Batlle i Rossell wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 09, 2012 at 03:30:55PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> > Lluís Batlle i Rossell <viric at viric.name> skribis:
> > 
> > > On Thu, Mar 08, 2012 at 11:37:55PM +0100, Lluís Batlle i Rossell wrote:
> > >> We still have in nixpkgs GNU Ghostscript by default, instead of GPL Ghostscript.
> > >> 
> > >> For what people at #ghostscript (ghostscript.com) told me, Artifex releases
> > >> GPL Ghostscript. Then, with delay, GNU people take that code, removes all
> > >> references to Artifex, and releases the same under the name GNU Ghostscript (our
> > >> default, and always lagging behind GPL ghostscript).
> > >
> > > They remove references to Artifex providing also a commercial licence, iiuc.
> > 
> > Yes, and you would probably get a different (and more accurate) answer
> > by asking bug-ghostscript at gnu.org.
> 
> Right, I have biased information! :) 'bug', though? 
> 

I've checked the mailing list...

About the changes, January 2012 says:
"This release is an adaptation of GPL Ghostscript version 9.04, with
changes to make it fully compliant with GNU standards and policies. "

"In the GNUification process I've removed all included source tree from other 
free projects. They are some projects heavily modified by Artifex that need to 
stay in the tree like jasper, but the others are useless (maybe I'm wrong in 
this area but tests are OK on my computer)."


The activity in the whole 2011 looks like quite abandoned. So there is only some
activity in this January 2012.

The GPL Ghostrscript people say that they end up giving support to people that
got no answers having contacted GNU Ghostscript (I imagine around 2011). They
also said that most distributions use GPL Ghostscript by default due to those
kind of troubles. They say to do much more testing than GNU does for the
Ghostscript releases too.

What do you think?