--- Begin Message ---
- To: Frank Küster <frank@kuesterei.ch>
- Subject: Re: Fixing teTeX's license violation in Debian; new license for cs stuff?
- From: Petr Olsak <petr@olsak.net>
- Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2006 09:51:33 +0200 (CEST)
- Message-id: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0609060910290.27542-100000@newton.feld.cvut.cz>
- In-reply-to: <86mz9ekwsd.fsf@alhambra.kuesterei.ch>
On Tue, 5 Sep 2006, Frank [iso-8859-1] Küster wrote:
> Hi Petr,
>
> sorry for answering so late - I was on holiday, then at work again and
> again away, and just didn't find time.
>
> Petr Olsak <petr@olsak.net> wrote:
>
> >> As a short-term solution, is it possible to just take the three ini
> >> files from the current version and install them along with the old files
> >> already included in teTeX-3.0?
> >
> > Roughly speaking: Yes.
> [...]
>
> Thanks for the clarifications.
>
> >> The second question: Have you come to a conclusion regarding the future
> >> license of the cs stuff? As I understood it, you weren't aware of the
> >> problems of your mixed license (GPL + renaming clause) and needed some
> >> thinking (probably without being yelled at on the mailing lists...).
> >
> > I plan to keep the meaning of my licesne in csplain.ini the same but to
> > change the text in csplain.ini file in order to the word "GPL" will be not
> > mentioned. Simply speaking: You can do anything with csplain code but you
> > cannot expect any warranty from me and you cannot distribute the
> > csplain.ini, csfonts.tex, il2code.tex, t1code.tex, hyphen.lan and
> > plaina4.tex files in changed form.
>
> You mean, unless I rename them, correct?
Yes.
> I strongly suggest to not invent a new license text. I think the LPPL
> is just what you need, although it allows modification without renaming
> in the case that a prominent notice is printed that it is a different
> system. If you find that not strict enough, I suggest to use a wording
> like Knuth did (or even better, add a "After renaming, you may freely
> use, distribute and/or modify the files").
Thank you for your suggestions. I know that I never use LPPL license
simply because I dislike the word LaTeX in the name of this license.
>From my point of view the LaTeX has totally bad philosophy. TeX itself was
not designed in order to do so big and complicated macrocode like LaTeX.
The effort to separate the TeX difficulties from user by macrocode cannot
be succesfull, IMHO. My opinion is well known (for example from my
article "Why I dislike LaTeX" in Czech) so everybody know that I have
nothing common with LaTeX. It means the word LaTeX canot be mentioned
in my licension text.
> Note, however, that
> "renaming" is not as clear as one might think on a web2c-based TeX
> system: Just moving a file around in a TEXMF tree may have the desired
> effect that it is not found when using cstex, while a renamed file will
> still be found with an appropriate line in TEXMF/aliases.
I know about this problem. Ideally, the TeX distribution cannot name the
format "csplain" if changed files was read during format initialisation.
The _name_used_by_user_ is more important than names of some files.
Yesterday, a user sent me a problem with \everypar and wrote: I used TeX
and your book about TeX [TeXbook naruby] and the program behaves different
than what is written in your book. I have read his log and I have had to
answer him: you did not use TeX but pdfetex in extended mode. Use original
TeX and you will see that my book describes the problem correctly. The
main mistake was, that you named the program TeX but it was not TeX.
The main aim of my license is to avoid these mistakes when a user
mentioned the word csplain.
> Do you have a timeline for a new release? Later this year, there will
Sorry, I have had plans to do this in Jun, but I have solved more
important things (outside TeX). I mean that my new release will only
change the license text mentioned in csplain.ini. I don't plan more changes.
So, my timeline is: the end of september.
> be a new TeXlive version (and a new Debian release which contains these
> files in teTeX and TeXlive packages). It would be a pity if the csplain
> things would have to be excluded from Debian (we are currently not
> allowed to distribute them).
>
> Regards, Frank
>
>
> By the way, may I forward your and my mail to the Debian Bugtracking
> system, in order to archive this discussion?
Yes, including all your archives of my letters.
Best regards
Petr
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