Re: User's thoughts about LPPL
Jeff,
> > I am afraid you do not know about the recent history of gcc.
> >
> > [...]
>
> We, as a project, understand this perhaps better than you do. We
> currently ship three different C compilers for woody: 2.95 in most
> cases, 2.96 for certain architectures, and 3.0 for one architecture
> (hppa).
>
> But the gcc people have different goals than the LaTeX Project, and such
> a situation is acceptable for the short term.
>
> > This situation was merely annoying. With LaTeX it would be
> > disastrous. It would contradict our professed goals.
>
> Would it really contradict your professed goals to have three
> LaTeX-alike systems floating around, one named LaTeX, one named FooTeX,
> and one named BarTeX?
the answer from me is no, that is already the case, eg LaTeX, pdflatex,
Omega's lamda, pslatex, and perhaps one or two I missed.
The point is not the fork on that level it is the fork on the package
level. LaTeX users, just as pdflatex users, etc. expect their documents if
processed at one site with LaTeX (or with pdflatex, etc) to come out the same
if processed with LaTeX (or with pdflatex, etc) at another. That is true as
long as the fork of any latex packages is using a new name.
It is also clear to the LaTeX users that if they use a fork which internally
supports arbitrary replacements of such packages (ie one that employs the
general filename remapping features then this feature is gone.
This is also why the trademark argument doesn't really help as a
suggestion. you can trademark latex but that doesn't keep its several hundred
(and growing) subcomponents conformant unless you start trying to trademark
such names as well which isn't really an option. I think this is what David
meant when he said "tired argument" as it was the third or fourth time the the
same chain of argument started to come up (including the same replies).
the trademark LaTeX would be helpful to avoid your python example, ie somebody
deliberately trying to pass a user a forked kernel as the original, but that's
all (might be enough to actually check for applying for some, but it doesn'
make the real problem (as we see it) go away.
> If I were to accuse LaTeX of anything, it would be a sloppy attitude
> towards legality in general. This isn't new; see the KDE mess of days
> past for an even worse example.
this is probably correct, and may have to be rectified and I think you for
pointing out some of those things or giving me ideas certain stuff.
>
> We've gone over part of this, in that your license (as recently posted)
> doesn't accurately reflect your real intentions, and it's my
> understanding that this is being resolved. But this constant
> backchannel about filenames and trademarks and so on is another.
yes, i would be glad if that could stop, I tried with
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200207/msg00422.html
perhaps some answers to that could bring us finally again to discussing a new
license text.
> It gets thrown around a lot in passing as a disclaimer, but there's
> really good reason for the LaTeX Project to consult a lawyer about some
> of this stuff. I understand that this costs money; OTOH, it seems to
> some of us that you aren't clear on the legal ramifications of some of
> the stuff you're doing, and a real legal opinion would do wonders to
> clear a lot of that up.
yes, we have to think about that perhaps (and check the financial etc
implications)
> (Not that Debian is trying to welsh out of helping you, of course. I'm
> not, anyway.)
for that i would like to thank you
frank
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