Re: Revised LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL)

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Jeff Licquia <licquia@debian.org> wrote:
> I have attached a new working draft for the LaTeX Project Public License
> (LPPL) below.

At first glance, everything looks fine except for section 5.

> 5.  If you are not the Current Maintainer of The Work, you may modify
> your copy of The Work, thus creating a Derived Work based on The Work,
> as long as the following conditions are met:
>
>   a. You must ensure that each modified file of the Derived Work is
>      clearly distinguished from the original file. This must be
>      achieved by causing each such modified file to carry prominent
>      notices detailing the nature of the changes, and by ensuring that
>      at least one of the following additional conditions is met:

This part is the main point of contention.  At least one of the
conditions must be DFSG-free.

>      1. The modified file is distributed with a different
>         Filename than the original file.

Not free enough, for reasons spelled out before.

>      2. If the file is used directly by the Base Format when run, and
>         the Base Format provides a facility for such files to be
>         validated as being original parts of The Work, then the file
>         does not represent itself as being the unmodified original
>         Work.  This does not imply that the Base Format must provide
>         such a facility; only that, if such a facility is available,
>         it must be used in the normal way and it must enable the Base
>         Format to validate as being modified.  If the Base Format does
>         not provide such a file validation facility, then the file may
>         be modified without reference to such a facility.

I think that this is not good enough.  This sounds a lot like "trusted
computing".  There are valid reasons to want to run untrusted
versions.  This is basically a restriction on what kinds of
modification you can make.

>      3. The license notice for The Work specifies that the file may
>         be modified without renaming, or the license notice for the
>         Base Format specifies that files of this class (for example,
>         files that are named a certain way) may be modified without
>         renaming.

This is just making it easy to add an exception to this section.
Great if it is there, but it isn't always.

>   b. You must change any identification string in any modified file of
>      the Derived Work to indicate clearly that the modified file is
>      not part of The Work in its original form.
>
>   c. In every file of the Derived Work you must ensure that any
> addresses
>      for the reporting of errors do not refer to the Current
> Maintainer's
>      addresses in any way.

Strings for other programs (think browser id-strings) must be
modifiable to anything at all.  Strings strictly for human consumption
can be required to indicate that it is different.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu