Legacy ImageMagick Discussions Archive

Hi there,

I'm thinking about using Imagemagick in my program to convert a PDF to Jpg's (well I would prefer Png's but this seems to be broken).
However I'm a bit confused now because my program is shipped with a other program which costs money.

I'm using Imagemagick through the command line.
As far as I understand the Apache license this is all okay until now because I will include the license file and stuff.

But because I want to convert a PDF I also need to have GhostScript installed which is used by ImageMagick. And GhostScript is licensed under the GPL license. Does this means for me that because Imagemagick is using ghostscript my program also needs to be licensed under the GPL?

Or is everything fine and I can use ImageMagick?

Its pretty straight forward. If you use ImageMagick, follow the Apache II license. If you use Ghostscript adhere to the Ghostscript license. The ImageMagick license does not override the Ghostscript license. For interoperability of licenses, see http://www.osscc.net/en/licenses.html#compatibility.

yeah I understand this. But as I see it Imagemagick is using GhostScript for PDF conversation but isnt GPL. That's confusing me.

If I do it like you and tell the people that for PDF conversation they also need to install GhostScript is then everything okay?

We're not lawyers, its incumbent upon the user to decide if they are complying with the licenses of the software they use. As mentioned, to avoid problems with interoperability of licenses,ImageMagick utilitize delegate program and libraries that may operate under a different license. The ImageMagick license only applies to the source, images, and documents contained in the ImageMagick distributions (source or binaries).