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Re: Revised LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL)



On Thu, 2003-04-03 at 14:32, Brian T. Sniffen wrote:
> Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> writes:
> 
> > Scripsit Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>
> >
> >> That's good, but only if you're able to modify the Base Format.  It is
> >> easy to imagine scenarios where you are able to modify individual
> >> files, but not the validation mechanism.
> >
> > Could you please imagine one? Remember to include in your imagined
> > scenario that the unmodified Base Format will have a documented option
> > to turn off validation.
> 
> Sure: I take the Base Format and make a functional change to it,
> removing the option to turn off validation.  Now I distribute this
> under your draft LPPL.

I am not clear how this would violate the license, or how this would
make it DFSG-nonfree.

(I'm also not clear why someone would want to do such a thing.  Such a
modified version could not be called "Standard", meaning that the
validator would be validating against a standard that did not exist.)

> The freeness of a license should be as divorced as possible from
> accidents of implementation.

We talk a lot about *shoulds*.  Let it be recognized by everyone that
the LaTeX Project has a different set of *shoulds* than we do.

I would prefer that they use the GPL, personally, but that isn't going
to happen.
-- 
Jeff Licquia <licquia@debian.org>



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