[German]Today a short note for administrators in corporate environments who use the PDFCreator from pdfforge on their Windows clients. The developer has made a change to the software for creating PDF documents. As a result, this software can no longer be used free of charge in corporate environments; instead, the business versions must be used.
What is PDFCreator?
PDFCreator is an application program for Windows that can be used to create PDF files from any application. When installing PDFCreator, a corresponding Windows PDF printer driver is set up. This printer driver can be used to create PDF files directly from any application that provides a print function.
According to Wikipedia, the program is licensed partly under AGPL and partly under other proprietary licenses. The basic version of PDFCreator Free is free of charge. In addition to the free version, the paid versions for business uses are also available on the provider's website.
Free version no longer runs in domains
It looks like the provider has blocked the free basic version of PDFCreator Free for use in corporate environments. Blog reader Jens contacted me by email this week and wrote that there had been a change regarding PDFCreator Free. He noticed on April 16, 2025 in the patch management, which is used in his corporate environment, that there is a new major version (6.0.0) of the well-known application PDFCreator from pdfforge.
Free version can no longer be installed on clients
This new version was supposed to be installed on a test basis, but this no longer works. As soon as you open the installer for PDFCreator on a Windows client that is domain-joined, only the Business/Professional version is displayed. It is not possible to install the software.
Vendor restricts PDFCreator Free
After some research, the reader found what he was looking for on the vendor's website. In the release notes of PDFCreator version 6.0.0 dated April 10, 2025, the following statement can be found:
Those using PDFCreator Free within a business environment will need to upgrade to PDFCreator Professional or one of the other business editions. Please do not uninstall PDFCreator Free as installing another edition will automatically migrate your settings.
There is also the thread How to install the free version 6 of PDF Creator? in the support forum, where some users points out the facts. This means that it is no longer possible to use the new versions of PDF Creator Free in a business environment if a client is a member of a domain. Perhaps the note is of interest to other readers before they wonder what is going on, the reader thinks.
