Re: TeX Licenses & teTeX (Was: Re: forwarded message from Jeff Licquia)
Boris Veytsman <borisv@lk.net> writes:
> > From: tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)
> > Date: 08 Aug 2002 12:19:03 -0700
>
> > > accepted them *includes* a guy named Donald Knuth. You want the right
> > > to interpret DFSG; don't you think Knuth deserves the right ot have a
> > > say in interpretation of his license?
> >
> > Of course. But he must actually pick on interpretation and stick with
> > it. Moreover, when he says "what I want to get", that is not some
> > kind of extension of the license. There are many things I want that I
> > don't put in my licenses, and that is clearly the case with Knuth as
> > well.
>
> Do you want to say the following: "Knuth wanted to make TeX non-free,
> but due to loopholes in his license it is actually free. Since LaTeX
> guys want to make their licnese clear and unambigous, their license is
> non-free"?
No. I want to say:
Knuth wanted to make TeX free, and he did. And the LaTeX people want
a *different* license from the TeX license--indeed, they want one that
is quite possibly non-free.
Because the LaTeX people have seriously misunderstood the TeX license
in several areas, they incorrectly think their license is basically
the same as the TeX license.
> Thomas, this statement is wrong. Try deleting the file cmr10.tfm and
> calling tex -- you will see TeX calls metafont to recreate this file
> BEFORE it reads the first line of your document, and does not proceed
> until this file is generated. Surely, you can make a drop-in
> replacement of cmr10.tfm.
Yes. And that's the point.
> My contention is that this will change
> TeX-the-system. The definitive TeX guide -- Knuth's The TeX Book --
> describes CM as an integral part of TeX. I am not a lawyer, but I were
> subpoenaed to a court as an expert witness, I would tell under oath
> that CM fonts ARE a part of TeX(TM) and show The TeX Book as a proof
> of this.
But there is *nowhere* a copyright on "TeX-the-system". There is,
rather, a copyright on various parts of it. The conditions on copying
tex.web make no conditions whatsoever except that you copy it
unmodified, and are explicit that patches are OK.
The conditions on using the name TeX do not say anything about what
fonts you must link it with, but only that the trip test passes and
that you be happy with the installation.
> Therefore your drop-in replacement without changing the name
> of TeX is violation of license, and no amount of word juggling will
> ever change this.
Which license? Exactly! Can you quote it?
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