Re: TeX Licenses & teTeX (Was: Re: forwarded message from Jeff Licquia)
Branden Robinson writes:
> On Mon, Aug 05, 2002 at 12:01:09PM +0200, Frank Mittelbach wrote:
> > Even here on the list I noted that several people (which I presume to to be
> > debian-legal regulars) used "public domain" in different senses.
>
> There is only one sense.
I wasn't questioning that, I was pointing out that while this is legally true,
many people misunderstand the fact that they use a "legal term" and use it for
something slightly different (and even some people on this list)
> Nice try, but the contention is that Knuth's licensing elsewhere
> supersedes the terms expressed within the file itself. Have you never
> heard of dual-licensing?
>
> If you disagree, or if this understanding is not clear and unambiguous
> -- if the copyright license files that Knuth wrote cannot clearly be
> interpreted to apply to each and every file in TeX, METAFONT, and
> Computer Modern, respectively -- then the Computer Modern fonts are NOT
> DFSG-free.
yes I disagree.
what copyright license file you are talking about anyway? he hasn't written
such a thing, he has written articles and gave talks and he put various
comments into files (some of which are contradictory).
the text that Claire cited was not a license but an article.
i'm sorry if that is going to offend you again, but it seems to me that you
are doing here is exactly what I was I was commenting on in the other post
(and that felt so affronted about): use a legal situation (dual licensing) or
no proper licenses to interpret the situation against the authors wish.
> I repeat: the file renaming requirement is not DFSG-free, and you
> wanting it to be so will not make it so. DFSG 4 does not permit it.
Then the Computer Modern Fonts or TeX are not free (at least according to
Branden Robinson) that may well be the case.
> So, please, cut it out with the sophistry. A file renaming requirement
> is not DFSG-free and never will be unless the DFSG is amended to make it
> thus.
It is nice to learn all those new words, first troll now sophistry.
However the situation seems to me just the other way around, you are trying
sophistry here: file renaming requirments are what TeX and friends brought to
the world of free software (perhaps not DSFG free, but free anyway). Don Knuth
hasn't formalized it in a proper (or improper) license but he has made it very
clear that that is what he would like others to follow when using reusing or
changing his work(s).
frank
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