Re: forwarded message from Jeff Licquia
On 2002-07-16 21:35:23 -0500, Steve Langasek wrote:
> control of the software so that everyone can benefit. If you don't
> value the freedom that permits Debian to ship changed versions of
> software, that's your prerogative; but that happens to be the one thing
> you'll get all Debian developers to agree on. The freedom to create
> these "personal versions" of software is the only protection that our
> thousands or millions of users worldwide have against software authors
> who are unresponsive, missing, or antagonistic. It is our insurance
> policy that we will be free to continue to do what we believe is in the
> best interest of our users, even when upstream disagrees. If the Latex
> developers don't believe this is important enough that they will choose
> a license that complies with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, that's
> once again their right as copyright holders, but it definitely makes it
> incompatible with Debian's stated goals.
The (La)TeX community has lived nearly 25 years very happily
without that freedom; indeed we all remember the one time someone
tried to exercise that freedom (he distributed modified versions
of the cm fonts).
So yes, we value the interchangebilty of our documents higher
than the freedom to modify the components which are used by these
documents.
Best regards
Martin
--
Martin Schröder, MS@ArtCom-GmbH.DE
ArtCom GmbH, Grazer Straße 8, D-28359 Bremen
Voice +49 421 20419-44 / Fax +49 421 20419-10
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