Re: Ironies abound

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

Scripsit Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>

> Later in the file, it is written:
>
> ,----
> | If this program is changed, the resulting system should not be called
> | `\TeX'; the official name `\TeX' by itself is reserved
> | for software systems that are fully compatible with each other.
> | A special test suite called the ``\.{TRIP} test'' is available for
> | helping to determine whether a particular implementation deserves to be
> | known as `\TeX' [cf.~Stanford Computer Science report CS1027,
> | November 1984].
> `----

But this is right after a paragraph that speaks about "the \.{WEB}
description can be extended without changing the core of \TeX82
itself", which appears to allude to distributing patches without
actually modifying tex.web.

> http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb07-2/tb15knut.pdf where he also
> says:

> ,----
> | All of the methods described in these books are in the public domain;
> | thus anybody can freely use any of the ideas. The only thing I'm
> | retaining control of is the names, TeX and METAFONT: products that go
> | by this name are are obliged to conform to the standard. If any
> | changes are made, I won't complain, as long as the changed systems are
> | not called TeX or METAFONT.9
> `----

But _methods_ and _ideas_ were never protected by copyright in the
first place.

-- 
Henning Makholm              "Wir kommen nun ans Ziel unserer Ausführungen."