Re: latex-unicode sources and licensing
On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 07:21:39PM +0200, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl wrote:
> Am 26.07.2011 12:27, schrieb Lionel Elie Mamane:
>> Given that the true sources seem to have disappeared, I suppose we
>> could consider the .sty file to be its own source; it is a stretch,
>> but removing unicode support for (La)TeX would be rather
>> ... damaging. I really, really vote for that the absolute upper limit
>> to what we would do about this is we move it to non-free, not remove
>> (I want good unicode support in my LaTeX!).
> For the ftp-team the question is: What file would you edit, if you
> would need to do any modification on it? If it's feasible to edit the
> sty (even so it's not the original source), and you would edit the sty
> if you needed to make a change, then that's what we would consider to be
> the source.
Sorry, I have not kept you in the loop. We found the new upstream
maintainer, we found his darcs repository and it contains the true
sources. So the point is moot. But FYI editing the .sty file is
certainly feasible; it is roughly a portion of the .dtx file with
"literate programming" comments stripped. And now that we have the
.dtx file, we even see it does not contain _any_ comment for that part
of the code!
>>> %% This program is provided under the terms of the LaTeX Project Public
>>> %% License with some modifications.
>>> %% See the file LICENSE (http://www.unruh.de/DniQ/latex/unicode/content/LICENSE)
>>> %% for information.
>>> I can't find that file [.. neither in Debian sources nor in
>>> upstream...], and /usr/share/doc/texlive-latex-extra does not
>>> contain licensing information for it (I grepped for "ucs" and
>>> "unicode" and did not find anything). So how do we know whether it
>>> is DFSG-free software? What are the "some modifications" above?
>> Formally even: how do we know we can redistribute it in the way we
>> do.
> I found
> http://web.archive.org/web/20050307171101/http://www.unruh.de/DniQ/latex/unicode/content/LICENSE
> but haven't read the content, yet.
Upstream (that is, texlive, not the "ultimate" upstream maintainer of
latex-unicode) actually had the license file in a place I had not
looked at. The license is actually LaTeX project license plus
additional authorisations, so no DFSG problem.
So, on the Debian side we have to:
1) Include that license in debian/copyright, document which part it
applies to.
2) Include the true source in the source package. The plan for that
currently is to simply let it trickle downstream in its natural
way: wait for the "ultimate" upstream maintainer (which I have
prodded) to upload it to CTAN, and then it will end up in the next
texlive update and then in the Debian package.
--
Lionel
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