Re: Revised LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL)
On Wed, 2003-04-02 at 02:06, Walter Landry wrote:
> At first glance, everything looks fine except for section 5.
>
> > 5. If you are not the Current Maintainer of The Work, you may modify
> > your copy of The Work, thus creating a Derived Work based on The Work,
> > as long as the following conditions are met:
> >
> > a. You must ensure that each modified file of the Derived Work is
> > clearly distinguished from the original file. This must be
> > achieved by causing each such modified file to carry prominent
> > notices detailing the nature of the changes, and by ensuring that
> > at least one of the following additional conditions is met:
>
> This part is the main point of contention. At least one of the
> conditions must be DFSG-free.
Yup.
> > 1. The modified file is distributed with a different
> > Filename than the original file.
>
> Not free enough, for reasons spelled out before.
Right.
> > 2. If the file is used directly by the Base Format when run, and
> > the Base Format provides a facility for such files to be
> > validated as being original parts of The Work, then the file
> > does not represent itself as being the unmodified original
> > Work. This does not imply that the Base Format must provide
> > such a facility; only that, if such a facility is available,
> > it must be used in the normal way and it must enable the Base
> > Format to validate as being modified. If the Base Format does
> > not provide such a file validation facility, then the file may
> > be modified without reference to such a facility.
>
> I think that this is not good enough. This sounds a lot like "trusted
> computing". There are valid reasons to want to run untrusted
> versions. This is basically a restriction on what kinds of
> modification you can make.
Yes, but note the "if". It is perfectly legal to disable or remove the
"trust" provisions of the code, in which case you have no obligation
regarding the other parts of the code.
I agree that *requiring* the use of the trust facilities is bad; I'm
attempting to make it possible for LaTeX to be able to rely on the trust
facilities in "Standard LaTeX" while maintaining the freedom to ignore
it for "non-Standard LaTeX".
> > 3. The license notice for The Work specifies that the file may
> > be modified without renaming, or the license notice for the
> > Base Format specifies that files of this class (for example,
> > files that are named a certain way) may be modified without
> > renaming.
>
> This is just making it easy to add an exception to this section.
> Great if it is there, but it isn't always.
Yup.
> > b. You must change any identification string in any modified file of
> > the Derived Work to indicate clearly that the modified file is
> > not part of The Work in its original form.
> >
> > c. In every file of the Derived Work you must ensure that any
> > addresses
> > for the reporting of errors do not refer to the Current
> > Maintainer's
> > addresses in any way.
>
> Strings for other programs (think browser id-strings) must be
> modifiable to anything at all. Strings strictly for human consumption
> can be required to indicate that it is different.
How would you word this differently to avoid this problem?
--
Jeff Licquia <licquia@debian.org>
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