Bug#225833: [SPAM?]: Bug#225833: Letter vs A4 again
Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu> wrote:
> Frank Küster <frank@kuesterei.ch> writes:
>
>> Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu> wrote:
>>
>> > Sure you can, in fact you already do have such a thing. It's not an error not
>> > to specify margin sizes in your document, there is a default specified in the
>> > class files. If the sysadmin felt like it he could go and edit those defaults.
>>
>> No he cannot - the license forbids this. If he wants to change a
>> standard class to produce a different layout, he has to rename it [1].
>> And there's a reason for that.
>
> Only if he wants to redistribute it. Or do you claim that copyright law
> reserves the right to make private modifications that nobody ever sees? That
> would be unenforceable even if it were true (and I don't believe it's true in
> any jurisdiction).
You are right: License-wise you may change them without distributing
them. However, one should still never do that, and I'm not willing to
accept such a possibility as a reason for a packaging decision. It
would be insane: If you ask anybody for help, and after a while he finds
out you've locally modified the base classes, he'll never help you
again. Remember that you may not send him the files (that would be
distribution), he has to find out by looking at your debugging output.
Even giving him an account on your machine for testing may be
distribution, the wording of the LPPL is a bit unclear.
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)
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