Re: Revised LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL)

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> wrote:
> Scripsit Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>
> 
> > That's good, but only if you're able to modify the Base Format.  It is
> > easy to imagine scenarios where you are able to modify individual
> > files, but not the validation mechanism.
> 
> Could you please imagine one? Remember to include in your imagined
> scenario that the unmodified Base Format will have a documented option
> to turn off validation.

Why does the Base Format necessarily make it easy to turn off the
validation?  That is not in the license.

But to give a simple example, what if the Base Format is running on a
different machine?

> > > > >   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.
> 
> > b. For any modified file of the Derived Work, you must clearly
> >    indicate, preferably within the file itself, that the modified file
> >    is not part of the The Work in its original form.
> 
> I don't think this would be acceptable to the LaTeX people, if you
> mean that it must be legal to keep the identification strings that are
> displayed to the user unchanged, thereby creating a derived work that
> actively tries to misrepresent itself as the original work. I do not
> think that the DFSG requires that such misrepresentations be legal,
> either.

It depends on what the id strings do.  If Mozilla were licensed under
this license and the browser-id was hard-coded, that clause would make
it illegal to spoof the browser id string and distribute the result.
That is why I wrote "clearly indicate".  Specifying the notification
too strongly inhibits freedom.  If you like, you can strongly suggest
modifying id-strings.  Then you can LART those who keep it without a
good reason.

I get the feeling that this license is being considered only in the
context of LaTeX, not in the context of all of free software.  We
can't say that it is ok to use this license for LaTeX, but not for
Mozilla, Apache, Samba and OpenSSH.

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu