Re: TeX (Knuth) copyright

[Federico Di Gregorio <fog@pcamb6.irfmn.mnegri.it>]

On Mon, Oct 19, 1998 at 04:00:51PM +0200, Rafael Laboissiere wrote:
> Hi Jules,
> 
> >>>>> "JB" == Jules Bean <jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk> writes:
> 
>     JB> Well, according to /usr/doc/tetex*/copyright on my system, Tex
>     JB> is GPL. 
> 
> Thanks for your reply.  This is my understanding too, as the copyright
> files in /usr/doc/tetex* should reflect the whole set of software
> distributed as teTeX.  I just asked the question because when I proposed
> to change TIPA's copyright to GPL, the author opposed it to the
> "copyright notice made by Knuth".  If TeX is really GPL, it is even
> better, and I will tell that to the author.

If I remember correctly TeX is not under the GPL. The Knuthian
license tell you that you can do anything you want with the sources
but the result can be called "TeX" only (and only!) if the executable
outputs the right results processing a very peculiar file
called the trip-file (trip.tex if I remember correctly).

TeX is still DFSG free even with this modified license, IMHO.

Hope this helps,
Federico