Re: User's thoughts about LPPL
> Perhaps latex is a miserably poor interchange format. Or perhaps
> the language needed a clear standard and clear documentation. After
> all, the way the world of C programmers solved this problem was by
> careful standardization, not by insisting that there should be Only
> One C Compiler.
It may not be ideal that the language is standardised via its canonical
implementation, and that implementation is in a macro expansion language
that makes every line of the implemenattion visible to the document,
that is, means that any change in implementation will cause some
documents to behave differently. However despite that, latex is a
remarkably good and stable document format, and one can port documents
across the world and across nearly two decades of time with remarkably
few problems. The licencing arrangement is one reason for that success.
> Freedom includes the right to do things that you (and even I) think
> are stupid. Debian stands for freedom.
So do I. LaTeX is free software. I want to keep it that way.
> Naw, they'd be done by totally different people without even any
> collusion.
It is the responsibility of the person distributing the renamed work to
ensure that it is distributed under a licence that avoids it be renamed
back to latex. I would say that the different person who symbolic linked
it back to latex would be breaking that licence (which need not be
LPPL). But I'm not a lawyer, if yow lawyer convinces you that is
allowed, so be it. Any licence can only protect against certain.
Debian did a good job with DFSG in acknowledging that GPL was not
suitable in all circumstances. If you have two licences it's clear that
some things will be allowed in one and not the other, even if both are
Free as defined.
LaTeX is distributed with a free Licence that most independent people
have taken as meeting the DFSG. The Licence has proved very successful
in keeping LaTeX stable while allowing arbitrary modified versions.
It has also proved very popular in the latex community with many third
party packages being distributed under that licence.
In amongst all the mis information and scaremongering, these threads
have shown a few places where the text of the licence could be
improved/clarified, and Frank's long message asks for a few more places
where clarification would be helpful. We can, and no doubt will, re-draft
the licence to address these valid concerns but I don't see how your
message helps in any way to get towards clarification.
Yes the LPPL does not stop anyone writing something from scratch and
calling it latex. The chance that Debian or anyone else would distribute
such a thing is rather small.
As Frank said (about the TeX and Font licences rather than LPPL)
> Now i'm not saything this is legally inforcable the way he said it (i have no
> idea), for TeX there is a trademark, though for Computer Modern there is
> probably none (definitely not for the 72 individual font names. Nevertheless
> Debian wouldn't get a good press if it would generate modified versions of
> such programs and fonts and distributed them under the original names.
David
_____________________________________________________________________
This message has been checked for all known viruses by Star Internet
delivered through the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service. For further
information visit http://www.star.net.uk/stats.asp or alternatively call
Star Internet for details on the Virus Scanning Service.
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: