On Tue, 31 Jan 2006, Frank Küster wrote:
In practice, this means that the version string displayed in the file log of a LaTeX run will be different, and that the user, or a developer of a package that uses "the work", has the possibility to check for the version and act accordingly; it does of course not mean that he must do such a check.
Ok, that seems reasonable to me. Much like the human-readable version info when running a program with -v or whatnot.
A human can tell the difference if he bothers to look. System software does not change behavior based on this human identification.
I know, the freedom to shoot yourself into the foot. But I think it's not unreasonable to require that the user is at least notified what happened, and that can only be done by changing the identifier in an interactive dialog, or by issuing font substitution warnings in a batch run.
I think our disagreement is that you think the licensor may require the software to actively notify some user, where I think the licensor may require that it be identifiable if the recipient of the software package cares to look for such identification. Is this a fair summary?
I can see no way to force notification in most systems that does not interfere with the fundamental freedom to make changes.
-- Mark Rafn dagon@dagon.net <http://www.dagon.net/>