Re: LaTeX & DFSG
On Thu, 2002-07-18 at 19:16, Mark Rafn wrote:
> On 18 Jul 2002, Jeff Licquia wrote:
>
> > > Thanks, but no thanks. I do not want you to have this freedom. I do
> > > not want you to send me these "maybe altered" weights. I do not want
> > > you to be able to send them to anybody. I abhor the thought that my
> > > business associates, colleagues or anybody else might use your weights
> > > UNKNOWINGLY. You have the right to distribute any weights as long as
> > > you call them deb-kilograms or Pickwickian kilograms -- but please do
> > > not meddle with the standard weights.
> >
> > This is a restriction the Debian Project can live with.
>
> We can? I guess this is the danger of analogies. We can live with a
> restriction that an altered "kilogram" program may not have it's default
> invocation named "kilogram". I hope we would not accept a package which
> specified that any derived work's output may not refer to 950g as a
> kilogram.
No, but I think Boris is more concerned with your former example than
your latter one.
Think of it as fraud; a hacked LaTeX is calling itself "LaTeX"
fraudulently, as it were, just as a 950g "kilogram" is fraudulent.
There's nothing wrong with making a 950g weight so long as it doesn't
pass itself off as a 1000g weight. Similarly, it would seem that the
LaTeX Project doesn't really mind people hacking on LaTeX as long as
it's not called "latex".
> Here's another analogy:
>
> Would you accept a mapping program that specified that Taiwan may not be
> shown in a color different from China? Even if the authors only wanted to
> ensure that all users got consistent output on different distributions?
I would think that this is a problem. I'm not sure it relates to
Boris's objection, however.
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