Re: LaTeX & DFSG
On Sun, 2002-07-21 at 17:24, William F Hammond wrote:
> Jeff Licquia <licquia@debian.org> writes:
>
> > Let's imagine something like LaTeX licensed under something like the
> > LPPL, and let's also assume that I'm going to hack it.
> >
> > So, I edit "article.sty". OK, no problem; just rename it to
> > "article-hacked.sty".
>
> (You mean, I think, for LaTeX2E that you want to hack article.cls,
> which is the LaTeX "article" class.)
>
> I'm dubious about the sanity of bring up here a dependence of "book"
> on "article", and, in any event what I describe next is probably not
> what I would actually do, but, granted your scenario, TDS and Kpathsea
> become relevant.
Right. I imagine my usage of file names regarding LaTeX is causing
shudders to creep up lots of spines. Even should the need arise, I'm
sure I would be the last person you'd want hacking on LaTeX. :-)
> It only gets touchy when others become involved. I'm not sure how it
> might play "legally" when the desired scope might be, say, a group on
> my local platform -- for which a texmf tree could be provided -- and
> all group members consent. It becomes enormously serious if I want to
> burn a CD with this hacked article.cls in a new GNU/Linux system's
> main texmf tree. LPPL certainly should say that I must not call it
> article.cls in that context.
If the LPPL says this, then the LPPL is non-free.
Remember: the DFSG does not mandate fraud. You can require that
article.cls not advertise itself as "article" OR that your hacked LaTeX
not identify itself as LaTeX; indeed, you have a lot of latitude in
making sure that people know they're not running "standard whatever".
But it must be possible for my hacked LaTeX to process standard LaTeX
documents without a single change.
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