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Artifex Software

Artifex Software develops the Ghostscript PDF/PostScript interpreter and the MuPDF and PyMuPDF document libraries. Most of its products are dual-licensed under the GNU AGPLv3 or a commercial licence.

Licensing at a Glance

  • Open source
  • OEM / bundled
  • Subscription

  1. Most Artifex products are dual-licensed under the GNU AGPLv3 or under commercial licence agreements.[1]

  2. Under the AGPL, modifications must be disclosed, and deploying the software in a server-based application or service requires disclosing the full source code of that application to its users.[2]

  3. Anyone who cannot meet the AGPLv3 requirements needs a commercial licence, which removes the code-disclosure obligation and includes technical support.[3]

  4. Commercial options include an OEM Distribution License (per-copy cost with a quarterly minimum fee and annual reporting on distribution volume) and a Subscription License (annual volume reporting, not required for internal usage).[4]

  5. Ghostscript licensing is handled exclusively by Artifex Software, Inc.[5]

Products

References

  1. Licensing | Artifex · artifex.com · retrieved 2026-09-27
  2. Licensing | Artifex · artifex.com · retrieved 2026-09-27
  3. Licensing | Artifex · artifex.com · retrieved 2026-09-27
  4. Licensing | Artifex · artifex.com · retrieved 2026-09-27
  5. Ghostscript : Licensing · ghostscript.com · retrieved 2026-09-27

Litigation

All cases
  1. Artifex Software v. HancomUS District Court for the Northern District of California · 2017
    Settled
    Lessons learned
    • Using GPL code without a commercial licence can create a contract through conduct, without a signature.
    • Where code is dual-licensed, a copyleft breach may be valued at the price of the commercial licence.
    • Records of which licence is relied on for each embedded open-source component are relevant evidence.
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