Artifex Software, the company behind the open source Ghostscript PDF processing software, has filed a lawsuit against voting machine vendor Diebold and its subsidiary Premier Election Solutions. Artifex says that Diebold violated the GPL by incorporating Ghostscript into commercial electronic voting machine systems.

Ghostscript, which was originally developed in the late 80s, is distributed for free under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This license permits developers to study, modify, use, and redistribute the software but requires that derivatives be made available under the same terms. Companies that want to use Ghostscript in closed-source proprietary software projects can avoid the copyleft requirement by purchasing a commercial license from Artifex. Among commercial Ghostscript users who have purchased licenses from Artifex are some of the biggest names in the printing and technology industries, including HP, IBM, Kodak, Siemens, SGI, and Xerox.

Evidence of Diebold's Ghostscript use first emerged last year when electronic voting machine critic Jim March was conducting analysis of Pima County voting irregularities. He brought a technical question to the Ghostscript mailing list relating to his investigation and mentioned in passing that Diebold's use of Ghostscript could potentially fall afoul of the GPL. This view was shared by Ghostscript developer Ralph Giles, who referred the matter to the Artifex business staff so that it could evaluate the legal implications.

"Seems likely that they are not respecting our software license in this case. We do not consider bundling as an integrated component intended to work with other software as 'mere aggregation' under the GPL," wrote Giles in a mailing list post. According to InformationWeek, Artifex is seeking over $150,000 in damages and is calling for the court to block usage of the equipment.

Security researchers have uncovered numerous security vulnerabilities in voting machines produced by several major vendors, including Diebold. The voting machine company has faced several high-profile lawsuits in the past, including one filed by the state of California, where Diebold machines were subsequently banned over fraudulent claims.

If Artifex's allegations prove correct, then it will further demonstrate the broad scope of Diebold's technical incompetence and irresponsible business practices.