Actually, a lot of the PostScript clones use GhostScript internally. (I know Epson does or did, in their lasers.) So a major part of his idea has already been d

Actually, a lot of the PostScript clones use GhostScript internally. (I know Epson does or did, in their lasers.) So a major part of his idea has already been done. Back when I was involved in the laser printer business (at the beginning, in 1980, where we (Imagen, a Stanford TeX project spin-off) built the first typesetting-quality low-end laser printers), the main bugaboo was avoiding the PostScript licensing cost. (I think Adobe charged $100's of dollars per printer, depending on quantities sold.) We built a clone ourselves, but some of the big hardware manufacturers just licensed GhostScript cheaply from L. Peter Deutch. (Of Berkeley/PARC/ParcPlace fame, one of the great hackers.) Peter first wrote GhostScript on a lark, just to see how hard it could be (not hard for him ;-), then it became serious when he realized the demand for such a product. (He released slightly older versions as OSS and licensed the bleeding-edge version commercially.)