Re: Revised LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL)

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Jeff Licquia <licquia@debian.org>

> Let me try to improve on Branden's version, phrased a little differently
> so it becomes a new 5.a.2:

> "The entire Derived Work, including the Base Format, does not identify
> itself as the original, unmodified Work to the user in any way when
> run."

Perhaps it would help if we step back a bit and try to look at the
problem that the clause is supposed to solve. In my understanding it
is the following: What the LaTeX people would ideally want is
something like

 5.a.2. The modified Program must, when started for running in the
     most ordinary way, to make a good-faith attempt to cause a
     prominent message to be shown to the human user (if such a user
     exists), warning that it is not the Standard Version of the
     program.

I think something like this could be accepted by d-l, assuming that we
could find a workable compromise between generality and clarity in
the wording of the "good-faith attempt" stuff.

The reason why this would not "work" is that the best attempt an
average TeX hacker could probably work out would be to use the
\message or \write16 primitive to inject a message into the TeX
interpreter's stdout. There would be every risk that the message would
drown in the avalanche of routine progress messages that LaTeX
traditionally produces while running, thus never actually catching
the user's attention. That would (afaiu) be unacceptable from the
LaTeX people's point of view.

Perhaps, instead of specifying that a certain good method *must* be
used, the license simply ought to specify that the obvious but
insuficient method is not enough. Here is a (ugly and sketchy) attempt
at some language:

 5.a.2. The modified Program must, when started for running in the
     most ordinary way, to make a good-faith attempt to cause a
     prominent message to be shown to the human user (if such a user
     exists), warning that it is not the Standard Version of the
     program.
     If the modified Program is intended to be used with the Standard
     LaTeX format, then a message displayed by \message or a similar
     TeX primitive when the Program is loaded shall not be considered
     "prominent" for the purpose of interpreing this clause.
     The Standard LaTeX format contains a facility for displaying
     messages to the terminal in a way that is considered prominent.

-- 
Henning Makholm                        "Detta, sade de, vore rena sanningen;
                                 ty de kunde tala sanning lika väl som någon
                             annan, när de bara visste vad det tjänade til."