Handling of RC licensing bugs in TeXLive
Dear release team,
I kindly request your advice on handling three RC bugs in TeXLive
packages, and maybe ask for a lenny-ignore tag. Although all bug
numbers look quite recent, the first two are actually very old. But
these issues were originally reported against existing bugs in teTeX
which collected all license issues known at this time, and have now been
separated.
#477060, amslatex license; Source Package: texlive-base
Details of problems: The license of the AMSLaTeX package (Copyright by
the American Mathematical Society, AMS) is phrased badly and is
literally non-free. Plus, individual files have a different
license header in the file.
What's happened so far:
- Barbara Beeton at AMS has been contacted in April 2006 and
answered promptly. A discussion about License details followed,
only the parts relevant for AMSLaTeX are in the bug report. She
said they'd sort this out and use a DFSG-free license, but that
this might take long, because the people doing the work aren't
the ones to decide (and I guess the AMS management needed to
ask a lawyer, too).
- Following this answer, the bug report which originally
contained this conversation, #356853, got an etch-ignore tag.
- Nothing happened (no upload of AMSLaTeX to CTAN, in particular)
- In 2007, Barbara Beeton said they were working on it, and how
they planned to change things (but referring only to a part of
the problem)
- In particular, she said that the license of the
individual files, as well as some related package, amsrefs, to
the LPPL. This is planned for the 2008 update of AMS macros
- In April this year, the discussion came up again on the
Upstream (TeXLive) list, and Barbara Beeton answered again (see
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477060#45),
now saying that the license of AMSLaTeX itself is going to be
sorted out in a subsequent step. The timeline is
,----
| our hope is that, barring disasters, the update
| of ams-latex -- all of it -- will be ready by
| the end of the calendar year. (but unfortunately,
| we must allow for disasters; this past year has [...]
`----
I am aware that foo-ignore tags are usually granted for licensing issues
when it upstream has assured to be willing to clarify the situation in a
DFSG-free manner, *and* it can be expected that this is going to happen
in a timely manner. And that "timely manner" usually does not mean
longer than a Debian stable lifetime. While the first is completely true
here, the update has already taken very long, and there is now no chance
to get the planned update into lenny. I can personally understand well
why Upstream (AMS) has not been able to make an upload - their business
is not software development, but support for american mathematicians,
and I am sure that they *will* eventualy do it. But I would also accept
if the release team no longer feels confident that anything is going to
happen.
Anyway, I kindly request considering a lenny-ignore tag for this bug.
#483217, files by Donald Arseneau; Source Package: texlive-base
This has also first been reported in #356853.
Details of the problem: Donald Arseneau is a long-time contributor to
the TeX community. In the old days he used no license at all, or very
different license texts, many of which are legally unclear ("This is
free, unencumbered, unsupported software."), for his works. But the
general believe in the community is that he intends his stuff to be free
software. Just he doesn't care for legalese, and isn't easy to convince
to make any change.
Lately, I asked about this on the Upstream (TeXLive) mailing list, and
got an answer in
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=356853#260 with contact
data and a discouraging comment about getting an answer from him about
licensing stuff. Still, I would prefer to give it a try and convice him
before simply removing the files.
However, it is clear that no one among the Debian TeX Team will have
time to do this in the next couple of weeks, in other words in a
timeframe usefull for the lenny release.
The reasons: Many contributors to the team usually just leave licensing
questions to Norbert and me. Norbert is on VAC for I think 5 more weeks,
and I have just become father of a sweet son and am going to start my
paid work again tomorrow. I am sure this will leave me no time to
concentrate on a conversation with someone who's a bit "problematic", in
particular not to follow up on answers soon. And IMO not allowing things
to be forgotten is very important when discussing licensing things with
reluctant upstreams.
Thus, our personal timeline would be "contact him in autumn, give the
attempt two or three weeks, and remove if nothing can be gained". Again,
this doesn't fit the lenny release timeline. Furthermore, one open
question is whether files with unclear phrasing of their license should
be removed "to be sure" or can be kept if we believe it is safe.
I'd be glad if you'd grant this bug a lenny-ignore tag, too, although I
admit that the reasoning is weak.
#491354, Source Package: texlive-extra
This has been found out only recently by Karl Berry on the TeXLive
list. In a mail about a functional patch to one of the files he wrote in
parentheses "I wonder if these wsuipa fonts are truly free, BTW. I see
no notices anywhere."
Upstream is just about to release TeXLive 2008. This means that Karl in
particular will be completely taken up by this for the next 2 to 4
weeks. From what I know from him, he will probably follow up on that
issue himself, more so when we remind him. But he won't do it in the
next month.
In the case of this bug, I suggest to leave it just as it is for a
while: No ignore tags, since it wouldn't be warranted, but also no
removal from the package (or of the package). If Karl is still unable to
help us in late August, we should try to find time to make the contact
ourselves, and if that doesn't happen or is unsuccessful the fonts
should be removed shortly before the release.
Some remarks on the impact of removal:
We must admit that we do not know whether any of these files is used for
building Debian packages. My guess is that AMSLaTeX might be used by
some mathematics packages. This could be checked by looking at packages
with debtag field:mathematics which contain documentation, and verifying
whether any of them has hand-written LaTeX documentation (as opposed to
generated code). The files by Donald Arseneau might also be used by
packages' documentation, but I don't think this is very likely. The
wsuipa phonetic fonts are outdated (superseded by tipa), and my guess is
that any actively developped package related to phonetics has switched
to tipa.
I'd appreciate your comments,
Frank
--
Frank Küster
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
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