Re: Revised LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL)

[bts@alum.mit.edu (Brian T. Sniffen)]

Barak Pearlmutter <barak@cs.may.ie> writes:

> Maybe instead of sinking further and further into little details of
> how files are verified to be standard LaTeX and the distinction
> between the LaTeX engine and the files it reads and all that good
> stuff, we could back up a step?  This all really an attempt to
> procedurally implement an underlying concern.  Maybe the concern
> itself could be directly expressed in the license, abstracted away
> from its implementation?
> 
> Something like this:
> 
>     You must not cause files to misrepresent themselves as approved by
>     the official LaTeX maintenance group, or to misrepresent
>     themselves as perfectly compatible with such files (according to
>     compatibility criteria established by the official LaTeX
>     maintenance group).
> 
> Would this satisfy the LaTeX people?  Because I think it would satisfy
> the DFSG.  It might (arguably, perhaps) even be GPL compatible, if the
> authorship representation parts of the GPL are properly construed.

No.  The problem is this: does this ban the following code snippet:

% This is not actually standard LaTeX, but we do this for ease of use:
\set{\latexversion}{standard}

The LaTeX people are explicitly unhappy with this -- they want a ban
on something which programmatically interfaces in certain ways with
Standard LaTeX.  The DFSG will accept a ban on making false claims of
authorship to humans, but not a ban on making such false claims to a
program.

-Brian