Re: Knuth statement on renaming cm files and Licence violation.
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:
> Perhaps in part, but your line of reasoning above makes me extremely
> uncomfortable. When the author of a package has clearly stated their
> expectations and requirements for redistribution, it seems like that
> should be treated as the license, even if they didn't cross the
> appropriate legal "t". To do anything else seems... well, extremely
> rude. Even if Debian is not violating the intended license directly, to
> base a stance on the viewpoint that the license is legally uninforcable
> and therefore irrelevant seems rather disconcerting.
Are you worried that we would be violating it indirectly?
> I must admit that I fail to see where Knuth's license poses any sort of
> issue for the DFSG. The Artistic License has a very similar provision,
> and point 4 of the DFSG specifically states:
>
> The license may require derived works to carry a different name or
> version number from the original software.
Knuth's doesn't depending on what it means. The LAPL (as previously
posted here) certainly does cause a problem.
Note that DFSG-4 does not allow requiring he changing of *file names*,
but rather only the name of the *work*, which is a different
matter--and essentially so--since the name of the work is not a
functional element.
The LAPL advocates were previously saying that the whole goal of the
renaming requirement was specifically to restrict functional elements,
and that's ipso facto a violation of freeness.
The LAPL people were consistently misstating exactly what Knuth's
actual licenses said, and being incredibly simplistic about them; it
is in that background that I stress a careful legalistic reading of
Knuth's words, as a counterweight to the carefree "he means whatever
we say he means" attitude of some.
You seem to be suddenly entering this as if you were totally unaware
of the preceding controversy. I would suggest you go to the mailing
list archives and review the discussion.
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