Re: User's thoughts about LPPL
Thomas Bushnell, BSG writes:
> David Carlisle <davidc@nag.co.uk> writes:
>
> > LaTeX is a document markup language the primary aim is to have
> > portable documents. Thus anything that claims to be latex (or tex, or
> > the computer modern fonts) should produce the same output.
>
> But you have *no* way to assure this, short of trademarking the name
> "latex".
>
> I can write something which is radically (or minorly) deviant from
> latex, but not a derivative work, and I can totally fudge up your
> goal.
>
> Indeed, I can do two things:
>
> Make a derivate work of latex, which is variant, and called
> "special-non-latex".
>
> Make a package with no derivatives of latex at all, which contains a
> single symlink: 'latex -> special-non-latex'.
>
> Happy with that?
yes.
for the kernel it is a bit tricky, but for packages under LPPL (and the
majority of software which was put by their authors under LPPL) it is not a
problem.
the moment somebody has a document that loads your fudged package into LaTeX ,
LaTeX will detect that you are trying to sail under a stolen flag and that is
the whole purpose.
Note that there is no intention to discriminate against producing a better or
even only different version of a package. the intention is to ensure the
users expectation that if he/she puts a document through two LaTeX systems it
will either
- produce the same results
- or stop and tell that some component (for example your new package derived
from some other package) is not available at one site
frank
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