Re: Motivations; proposed alternative license
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:48:28PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 09:23:14PM -0400, Boris Veytsman wrote:
> > > TeX people are from a different culture. TeX is not going to evolve.
> > > It is frozen. As Knuth said, "These fonts are never going to change
> > > again" (http://sunburn.stanford.edu/~knuth/cm.html).
> >
> > If that philosophy is embodied in a copyright license, it violates
> > clause 3 of the DFSG and is unsuitable for the Debian distribution.
>
> TeX is not being distributed by Debian. teTeX, a distribution
> that includes a TeX-like component is. Thankfully, the TeX license is
> simple, and easily understood, unlike the LPPL-1.3 draft. I would
> recommend reading it yourself, Branden, just so that you don't get
> thrown red herrings.
>
> Simon
I'm sorry but that is just completely false.
tetex is not a "tex-like component" is a a packaged ready to run
distribution that contains tex and latex (and other tex related
software). The component parts of tetex are of course distributed under
the licences specified by their authors.
If "TeX is not being distributed by Debian" then
"LaTeX is not being distributed by Debian" either as LaTeX is a
component of tetex just as tex is.
TeX, the TeX fonts and LaTeX are all distributed under a "rename" rule.
If Debian can not distibute LaTeX under LPPL then it can not distribute
TeX at all, in which case it is pointless trying to re-write the LaTeX
licence to be DFSG compatible as latex can't work without an underlying
tex.
Could someone who speaks for Debian please state clearly how the TeX
licence meets DFSG in ways that LPPL does not. If we can't understand
this I don't see how we can possibly re-write LPPL to be compatible with
both the TeX licence and DFSG.
I repeat the TeX licence. Note point (2)
% This program is copyright (C) 1982 by D. E. Knuth; all rights are reserved.
% Copying of this file is authorized only if (1) you are D. E. Knuth, or if
% (2) you make absolutely no changes to your copy. (The WEB system provides
% for alterations via an auxiliary file; the master file should stay intact.)
% See Appendix H of the WEB manual for hints on how to install this program.
% And see Appendix A of the TRIP manual for details about how to validate it.
David
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