Re: forwarded message from Jeff Licquia
> Let's take a look at it from a different perspective. What happens when
> someone does something like this in their LaTeX document?
> \usepackage{article}
> (Sorry if I screwed that up; I'm not a regular LaTeX user.)
(yes you did, but you're forgiven:-)
> If the license prevents us from modifying the behavior of LaTeX *under
> any circumstances* when a document does that, then it seems to me that
> the license is not free.
Unfortunately "seems to me" is almost the only kind of comment that we get,
it would be more helpful if anyone could give a more objective criterion
that shows how LPPL breaks some clause of the DFSG, however not this
example.
If the command the latex uses isn't called latex then basically all bets
are off and it can produce anything at all.
You may find that you have a command "pslatex" in Debian (it's in
texlive; I think it's also in tetex)
pslatex is a wrapper around latex that modifies things, changing default
fonts mainly, although it could do anything else. It does not contravene
the LPPL on latex (and it is itself LPPL'ed) I wrote it, but even if
someone else had done that I would still say that it clearly does not
contravene the latex licence and
pslatex document.tex
can produce whatever the author of pslatex wants it to produce, it
certainly will not normally produce the same printed document as
latex document
on the same source.
David
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