Re: Revised LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL)
Mark Rafn <dagon@dagon.net> writes:
> On Mon, 7 Apr 2003, Henning Makholm wrote:
>
>> AFAIU, what the authors of the LPPL draft is trying to express is
>> nothing more or less than
>>
>> 1. You must make your modified package output to the screen a message
>> that it isn't Standard LaTeX.
>
> Would it be possible to use GPL wording for this? The ability NOT to do
> this when written for non-interactive use is important.
I seem to recall a line of argument that this is OK when only a small
number of things do it, but non-free in cases where hundreds of
components must do so (say, system boot time, or LaTeX). Thousands of
lines of "this is non-Standard LateX" flying by would prevent use in
many circumstances; would a single, collected "This is non-Standard
Latex; see logfile for which components are non-Standard" meet the
LaTeX group's requirements?
>> 2. If the environment where your modified package is intended to be
>> used provides a documented standard way of emitting such messages
>> to the screen, you must use that.
>
> I'll need more thought about this. A requirement to use a specified
> facility seems unfree to me at first sniff, but I could (yet again) be
> reading too much into it.
But you also have the freedom to change that facility, or even disable
it entirely, which makes it OK. Such changes impose additional
requirements on you, but I think there is a free path through this
license: to make totally free changes, disable the verifier, change
the package name to GNU/LaTeX, and I think you're set.
-Brian
--
Brian T. Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/
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