Re: Knuth statement on renaming cm files and Licence violation.
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:
> The CM fonts are generally considered to be part of the TeX system, since
> they're the default fonts, and I believe they've had this renaming
> requirement at least for quite some time. I certainly remember it clearly
> from when I first started using TeX in the early 1990s and had the
> impression that it was fairly old then.
See, this is where precision is really necessary.
First, "the TeX system" is a vague term, and best avoided entirely
when talking about legal things, since it doesn't enter into any legal
documents in question.
Second, the CM fonts contain, individually for each source file, a
requirement that if the source file is changed, it must be renamed.
There is nowhere a requirement placed on what the compiled .tfm can be
called.
> Right, I understand your distinction between what Debian does and what its
> users do, and it makes sense to me. I just still would never say that
> it's okay to break this kind of request, although I might say that it's
> legally permissible.
That's fine. What Debian does is what's *okay*, which is only a subset
of what is legally permissible. But what we insist on for our users
is a matter of legal permissibility. That is, we insist on their
right to be an asshole, even if we have no intention of being such
ourselves.
Thomas
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