Re: TeX Licenses & teTeX (Was: Re: forwarded message from Jeff Licquia)

[Glenn Maynard <g_deb@zewt.org>]

On Wed, Aug 07, 2002 at 07:23:24PM -0400, Boris Veytsman wrote:
> Note that etex, omega and pdftex do not make this claim:
> 
>     boris@bilbo:~$ etex
>     This is e-TeX, Version 3.14159-2.1 (Web2C 7.3.7)
> 
>     boris@bilbo:~$ pdftex
>     This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159-1.00a-pretest-20011114-ojmw (Web2C 7.3.7)
> 
>     boris@bilbo:~$ omega
>     This is Omega, Version 3.14159--1.23 (Web2C 7.3.7)
>     Copyright (c) 1994--2000 John Plaice and Yannis Haralambous
> 
> I said in my other mail that Debian *could* delete banner from tex and
> say something like "This is deb-TeX". My argument is that this would
> be of very limited use for the TeX users community. While this
> community supported and supports new programs like etex, pdftex,
> omega, etc, I do not think it would support a conscious effort in
> deleteing the common reference point.

The case here is making the TeX distribution in main use a different
font by default, due to licensing issues.  If the CM fonts are 
irrepairably non-free, this is unavoidable.

However, if this is done, the packages could be set up such that
installing the non-free font package would also make it revert
"cmr10.mf" to the real CM font, so installing the renamed TeX plus
the non-free package would give you the expected, unmodified behavior.
(Presumably whatever font replaced cmr10.mf would have its own name as
well, so people who actually want that font wouldn't be affected.)

Perhaps that would be less convenient than having CM in the default
package, but I don't think it would be of "very limited use".  I
certainly don't think the act of calling the program "deb-TeX" makes
it any less useful to anyone; that's purely cosmetic.

-- 
Glenn Maynard