How to convert Postscript files to PDF on Debian
GNU / Linux with ps2pdf
I'm currently
reading Free as in
Freedom (2.0) R. Stallman and the Free Software
Revolution
The book includes a reference to
Eric S. Raymond 's famous
The Cathedral and the Bazaar which does makes a point about
the important of
Open Source . I've read the
The
Cathedral and the Bazaar paper some very long time ago (in my
young days so to say) and hence I couldn't resemble much of the
document so I jumped in after the footnote in the
FAIF book
and decided to take a quick look on
The Cathedral and the
Bazaar once again to bring up some memories. I was stunned to
find the paper is available in many formats but officially not
included in
PDF . Since i'm a GNU / Linux user I've never
managed to get into the habit to read
postscript documents
which from modern day stand point are also already a bit of
obsolete and therefore I found it as a wise idea to
convert and
mirror the POSTSCRIPT (PS) version of the document to PDF on
pc-freak.net
Happily the
ps2pdf command to
convert the ps to pdf on my
debian gnu / linux is really easy:
ps2pdf cathedral-and-the-bazaar-Eric_Raymond.ps
Cathedral-and-the-bazaar-Eric_Raymond.pdf
ps2pdf is part of the
ghostscript deb package, so if
you can't find the program you will need to have it installed with
apt-get first.
By the way the Postscript file is easily readable using my default
gnome PDF reader
evince , but anyways I converted and
mirrored the paper for all those windows users who might like to
take a look at the document in PDF.
I've also made a
mirror of the original Cathedral and the Bazaaar postscript
document here , for all those who want to check out
The PDF version of the Cathedral and the Bazaaar is for download
here
Even though the "open source" movement is an interesting idea and
it had some major impact on the development of some free software
the idiology of
open source which was very much influenced
by this document is very weak compared to the philosophy
Richard
Stallman indcuded as of the great need of the software to be
free.
To be honest looking back in time for a long time being a Linux
user I did not make any distinguishment between "Free Software"
concept and "Open Source", even worser I considered to evangelize
on Open Source not realizing that initially what attracted me to
free software was the idiology of open source and not the real
values on which ground free software is built.
This kind of miss understanding between perception of "open source"
and "free software" I got and spread for years now I fully realize
and I seem like when I red back then
The Cathedral and the
Bazaar document I didn't looked any critical at the document
but it had a major, I would say "bad" impact on my idiology on
software for a long time. So for all those who had not checked it
it's worthy checking but only in case if one fully understands
Richard Stallman's concept of
Free Software, without this
understanding one can easily slip into the wrong believe (just like
me back in thme) that open source is the same as free software.
Even though open source can be free software it is not presumably
that an open source is free software and that it guarantees that
the published source will be free. But I'll stop now as I slept
away from my goal of the article to just log here
how a
convertion of postscript to pdf on gnu / linux is done.
Just to close up this article I warmly recommend on all people
interested into hacking and the history of Free operating systems
and Free software as
FreeBSD and
GNU / Linux the
Free as in Freedom (2.0) book ! Its truly a remarkable and
great inspirational reading for all people like me involved into
free software realm of ICT.