Re: TeX Licenses & teTeX (Was: Re: forwarded message from Jeff Licquia)
Boris Veytsman <borisv@lk.net> writes:
> The beginning of this file contains the phrase:
>
> % And don't modify the file under any circumstances.
>
> You *do* modify this file, using a sophistic argument to tell that you
> do not. You probably can do this on your own computer because
> copyright and trademark laws cannot forbid you to modify your own copy
> of a work. However, if you try to distribute your pair
> plain.tex+origplain.tex as parts of TeX (say, package this in
> tetex-base-*.deb), you will have a lot of surprises from Knuth and
> possibly from AMS.
No, not at all true.
I'm not *modifying* the file. Words (especially in law) already have
meanings. Whether that chicanery is what Knuth wants me to do, the
fact is that the terms of the license do not contain any filename
requirements, and indeed, if they did, the license would be non-free.
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