[Fwd: New nonfree/ hierarchy on CTAN]
CTAN are adopting Debian's definition of free software!
(Follow the links in this article, which was
<E10hCl5-0001OW-00@heaton.cl.cam.ac.uk> in comp.text.tex yesterday)
Jules
(Any replies for me to read, Cc: I haven't (yet) resubscribed to -devel)
Robin Fairbairns wrote:
>
> The CTAN team have been concerned, for some time, about the copyright
> status of the material held on the CTAN archives. In the course of
> preparation of the latest TeX Live disc, Sebastian Rahtz compiled a
> list of the licence status of many available packages, and it is the
> CTAN team's intention to extend that list to as full coverage of the
> archive holdings as is possible.
>
> In parallel with this work, we have instituted a new hierarchy on
> CTAN, called nonfree/; it is our intention to move all items, for
> which there are significant distribution restrictions, to that
> hierarchy.
>
> STRUCTURE
>
> The nonfree hierarchy mimics the structure of the main part of CTAN;
> there are (or may in the future be) sub-hierarchies nonfree/biblio,
> /fonts, /graphics, /indexing, /language, /support, /systems and /web
>
> For each entry in the non-free hierarchy, there is a corresponding
> entry in the main part of CTAN, which is a symbolic link to the
> nonfree/ hierarchy. Since CTAN does not index symbolic links, the
> only appearance that a non-free item makes in the FILES.* files is its
> instance on the nonfree/ hierarchy. The `quote site index' command
> uses FILES.byname, so that it will always tell you if the item you're
> seeking is not free.
>
> CRITERIA
>
> Licensing conditions that CTAN currently recognises are listed in
>
> http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/licenses.html
>
> In the terms defined therein, the nonfree/ tree will hold items whose
> licensing is unknown, nocommercial, nosell, shareware, or other.
>
> Notes:
>
> 1. CTAN cannot hold matter whose distribution is restricted, anyway:
> the archive has no control over what its mirrors might do. This is
> why there is no category `nodistribute'.
>
> 2. The `nonfree' licensing category nosource _does_ stay in the main
> CTAN tree; there are usable items on CTAN whose source is not publicly
> available, but which are nevertheless freely usable and distributable
> by all and sundry.
>
> 3. We need to treat unknown licenses as nonfree, because of the legal
> situation in many countries that one is obliged to assume that an
> author would not wish his/her propertty to be treated as if it were in
> the public domain. We have, as yet, moved nothing of category unknown
> to the nonfree/ hierarchy; we will be doing that job later in the
> year.
>
> THE FUTURE
>
> The CTAN team are slowly moving items to the nonfree/ hierarchy. This
> process may be expected to accelerate during the course of this year;
> in particular, one may expect items of category unknown to be moved
> starting next month (June 1999).
>
> If *you* are an author who has not responded to an enquiry about the
> status of your stuff on CTAN, we urge you to release a new version
> which makes its licensing status clear, and to upload that version to
> CTAN in the usual way (see README.uploads on any CTAN site). Don't
> forget to mail ctan@urz.uni-heidelberg.de -- uploads don't get acted
> upon without such a message.
>
> If you don't do this, and we don't otherwise deduce the status of your
> stuff, it is liable to be moved to the nonfree/ hierarchy, and to
> disappear from future CD distirbutions of TeX.
>
> OTHER INFORMATION
>
> While CTAN is _not_ enforcing an open-source policy, we recommend
> sites such as
>
> http://www.opensource.org/osd.html
>
> for discussion of the issues behind software licensing.
--
/----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------\
| Jelibean aka | jules@jellybean.co.uk | 6 Evelyn Rd |
| Jules aka | | Richmond, Surrey |
| Julian Bean | jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk | TW9 2TF *UK* |
+----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------+
| War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. |
| When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. |
\----------------------------------------------------------------------/
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