On Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 05:24:30PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > Yes. This is the fundamental question, namely whether the DFSG only > allows requirements of changing names as a way to handle what are in > essence marketing issues (making sure the user knows they have a modified > package), or whether it's permissable to protect APIs this way. The former. > Knuth clearly is attempting to protect an API. It's not clear to me, but that doesn't really matter. If the entire TeX community is going to rise up and call Debian a bunch of degenerates for saying that something that's been placed in the public domain is in the public domain, then maybe Debian doesn't need TeX or its community. (That said, perhaps you don't represent the entire TeX community -- just a didactic, moralizing fragment.) The DFSG is about preserving freedom. What people do with their freedoms can be good or bad. The DFSG is founded on the premise that APIs don't need "protection" from their users. If you hold copyright in software and feel that its APIs do require this sort of protection, you're welcome to compete with Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft in the proprietary software arena. But Debian has no use for your software in that event. -- G. Branden Robinson | If you have the slightest bit of Debian GNU/Linux | intellectual integrity you cannot branden@debian.org | support the government. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- anonymous
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