Re: User's thoughts about LPPL
On Fri, Jul 19, 2002 at 04:04:33PM +0100, David Carlisle wrote:
> it is allowed.
> pdftex for example produces different output from the same input.
> you could use the command "latex" for that as it doesn't involve any
> changes in LPPL'ed code, although tetex calls the command pdflatex
> as a user convenience so they can easily get access to both forms.
I would have expected this to require modifications to LaTeX in order to
call a different underlying engine -- but it's been a while since I used
LaTeX heavily, so...
> It is not reasonable that the author of a package such as
> "indentfirst.sty"
> for example (which consists of exactly 4 TeX tokens) should be expected
> to go to the trouble of trying to legally register that name.
No, agreed, but...
> the LPPL as it is currently drafted gives other users some assurance
> that if their documents have
> \usepackage{indentfirst}
> then their documents will behave as they expect (indenting the first
> paragraph of sections) and not invoke some other completely different
> code that someone thought was an "improvement".
This falls down because the "indentfirst" package is likely to be a relatively
small work, and until and unless it is incorporated into the LaTeX
distribution, there is absolutely no assurance that someone else somewhere
else won't come up with something with the same name, similar intent, but
critically-different results, without having heard of the first package.
In short, the protection of which you speak is only really present when the
package is included in a distribution large and widespread enough to justify
a trademark in any case.
Presumably CTAN will only provide one package with any given name, and this
fact alone is enough to provide the degree of protection required for such
a package, is it not?
> The latex3 project does exist as some kind of entity (has web sites and
> bank accounts etc) but as I say that isn't really any help in the
> general case. Most GPL'ed code is not from FSF and similarly most
> LPPL'ed code is not from the LaTeX3 project.
If there are a large number of third parties using the LPPL, all the more
reason to keep it simple, IMHO. I would at least move the sections regarding
maintainership into a separate document, and vigourously attack the rest
of the draft to remove unnecessary complication.
While I'm at it, thanks for spending the time both on LaTeX, and such
potentially head-banging-against-brick-wall discussions as this.
We appreciate it.
Cheers,
Nick
--
Nick Phillips -- nwp@lemon-computing.com
Seriousness is in the eye of the beholder.
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