Bug#183860: RMS's comment on this bug is mostly irrelevant. :-/
On Dec 25, 2003, at 14:48, Russ Allbery wrote:
However, that's not the case. A texinfo document is *not* TeX; it's a
completely different language that bears little resemblence to TeX.
Not at all. They look quite a bit like Τεχ. Looking quickly in a random
texi file I found with 'locate' (this one from GCC)
@titlepage
@title Porting libstdc++-v3
@author Mark Mitchell
@page
@vskip 0pt plus 1filll
@insertcopying
@end titlepage
That looks like Τεχ to me. Or, it looks like tr/\\/@/ foo.tex, actually.
What matters is whether the resulting PostScript or DVI document is a
derivative work of texinfo.
We need to determine if the page layout provided by texinfo.tex meats
the standard to be an original work of authorship. If it does, then I
think its fairly clear that the dvi (or PostScript, or whatever) IS a
derivative work of texinfo.tex.
One argument I could see for it not being is that it seems to be a
fairly "normal" and style.
Well, I'm interested in your answer to the above question about a text
to
HTML converter, since I think that would affect the answer to this
question.
I believe there have been cases where copyright suits have been filed
--- and won --- for copying the look of, e.g., websites. So, certainly
if the text to HTML converter includes layout templates (that are an
original work of authorship), absolutely.
PS: Either way, RMS assumably speaks for the copyright holder --- the
FSF --- so we can take his message as clarification from the copyright
holder.
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