Re: license violation in tetex-texmf-3.0 fixed
Petr, get a life. Stop hiding behind twisted words and making excuses for yourselfish actions. Perhaps it would be good for you to understand what GPL is all about. Truely, Darel Henman
Re: license violation in tetex-texmf-3.0 fixed
On 5/27/06, Ralf Stubner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Frank Küster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > It also has more disadvantages. Thinking it over, I can't figure out > under which license I may and/or must distribute a derivative work which > I created and renamed. If csplain were under GPL, it's clear: It must > be GPL. But it isn't under the GPL, and the license it is under doesn't > state clearly which license derivatives are supposed to use. An author can put any nonsense they want into a license -- it is up to the "users" to decide whether they can live with the license. In practice, most will rely on compilations (teTeX, TeX Live, linux distros) to make such decisions. At the risk of repeating myself, there is a duty on the part of packagers and testers to check for license problems before making a "release". It is unfortunate that license issues take time away from more productive pursuits. > I obviously can't use the same license text (because "same name > 'csplain'" would be self-contradictory). Am I obligded to replace > 'csplain" by my new name? Or am I allowed to drop it? As David pointed out, you are not allowed by GPL to add any further restrictions. It is definitly unclear what license one has (and is allowed to) use for a derived work. I think this problem is also at the heart of RMS's comment on debian-legal where Thomas asked about this license. It is ok for a free software license to carry a renaming clause. But you cannot do this by adding restrictions on top of GPL. IMO this makes csplain etc non-free. More like "non-sense", and in fact more in the category of inviting misinterpretation by referring to GPL which, as you note, forbids additional restrictions. I assume the intent of restricting the use of certain names is intended to reduce "forking", which does make life harder for package maintainers who get bug reports against 3rd party "enhancements". A rule that said "no program of macro can be invoked under the name 'epsf' or 'ps2pdf'." so we would have 'dvips-epsf.tex' and 'dvipsone-epsf.tex', 'gs-ps2pdf'[.bat], 'WinEDT-ps2pdf'[.bat] etc. would significantly reduce the traffic in c.t.tex and c.t.pdf. In practice, licenses are very blunt tools and just as likely to injure the tool's user as to perform the task at hand. -- George N. White III <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
Re: license violation in tetex-texmf-3.0 fixed
Frank Küster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > It also has more disadvantages. Thinking it over, I can't figure out > under which license I may and/or must distribute a derivative work which > I created and renamed. If csplain were under GPL, it's clear: It must > be GPL. But it isn't under the GPL, and the license it is under doesn't > state clearly which license derivatives are supposed to use. > > I obviously can't use the same license text (because "same name > 'csplain'" would be self-contradictory). Am I obligded to replace > 'csplain" by my new name? Or am I allowed to drop it? As David pointed out, you are not allowed by GPL to add any further restrictions. It is definitly unclear what license one has (and is allowed to) use for a derived work. I think this problem is also at the heart of RMS's comment on debian-legal where Thomas asked about this license. It is ok for a free software license to carry a renaming clause. But you cannot do this by adding restrictions on top of GPL. IMO this makes csplain etc non-free. cheerio ralf
Re: license violation in tetex-texmf-3.0 fixed
On Thu, 25 May 2006, Thomas Esser wrote: > Petr Olsak has notified me today, that tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz contains > three files which have been modified in a way that violates his license. > The modification had been done by me (as I wrongly assumed that the > license was GPL; in fact the license was "GPL with some additional > restrictions"). > > So, I just have updated these three files (reverted to the original > version) and replaced the "broken" tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz by the fixed > tetex-texmf-3.0po.tar.gz Thank you very much. > This update just fixes the copyright violation. I cannot recommend to > download this "update". The version of cstex / cslatex contained in > teTeX-3.0 (both tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz and tetex-texmf-3.0po.tar.gz) > is severely broken (e.g. pdfcslatex produces dvi by default). Thomas Esser had five possibilities how to react to the reported licence problem. 1. do nothing: that would mean that the licence violation would not be corrected. 2. to remove the whole tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz from CTAN: that would mean that the license violation would be corrected but teTeX 3.0 would not be usable never more. 3. to remove the relevant files (csplain.ini etc.) from the tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz archive: that would mean that the license violation would be corrected but csplain/cslatex stuff would no longer be usable in teTeX 3.0. 4. to replace the relevant files by old version (Feb. 2000): that would mean that the license violation would be corrected but pdfcsplain/pdfcslatex would not work properly. 5. to replace relevant files by newer version (Feb 2005): that would mean that the license violation would be corrected and all cstex stuff would work properly in teTeX 3.0 environment. We have had to send five emails to Thomas until he decided to do something else than 1. He decided on 4. Of course, we would be more happy if he decided to do 5 (it would be no extra work for him!), but given our current relationship, that would be too much to expect. > There is no current maintainer, since teTeX is declared dead (at least > at the moment until someone picks it up). This "dead teTeX" lives happily in many Linux distributions as the current and latest TeX software. Unfortunately, throught this "dead teTeX", a patch that violates csplain author's copyright got into hundreds of Linux (and other Unix) distributions. This was the main reason why I asked for the problem to be corrected. > Since I am not really maintaining teTeX any more, > I am not going to fix your bug in teTeX. This is not _my bug_ in teTeX, this bug is a consequence of our bad communication (i.e. communnication between T.E. and P.O.). I will try to show here what I mean by a better communication: * T.E. (March 2004): Petr, we plan to use only one TeX engine (pdfetex) for all formats. What should we do in CSTeX? * P.O. (March 2004): discussion about the best macrocode to fix this on cstex@ list. * P.O. (April 2004): Thomas, I am sending you a new version of CSTeX files which solves the problem of shared TeX engine for different formats. Of course, the main teTeX developer is not obliged to inform his co-workers about his plans. Here is what really happened: * Bug report from a user to P.O. (Feb. 2005): pdfcsplain does not work in new teTeX distribution. * P.O. (Feb. 2005): Oh my, there is shared TeX engine (pdfetex) for different formats. I didn't know about it. Discussion about the best macrocode to fix this on cstex@ list. * P.O. to T.E.: (March 3 2005): Thomas, I am sending a new version of CSTeX files which solves the problem of shared TeX engine for different formats. What went on at this point? I believe that the ideal communication betwen co-workers would follow like this: * T.E. to P.O. (Mar. 2005): thanks for new wersion, but I released teTeX tree tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz one month ago. There is old version of CSTeX here. I don't plan to do any changes in file tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz and this file will be for many months the official source of TeX software for hudreds of Linux distributions. * P.O. to T.E. (Mar. 2005): please, upgrade CSTeX files not only in the development tree but also in tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz. The old version of CSTeX does not work in the environment with shared TeX engine (problems with pdfcsplain/pdfcslatex). * T.E. to P.O. (Mar. 2005): done, tetex-texmf-3.0a.tar.gz is released. * P.O. to T.E. (Mar. 2005): Thank you. Unfortunately, this communication has never happened. What happened was this: P.O. was never informed that the source for Linux distributions was not upgraded with CSTeX files from March 3 2005. The end users of CSTeX from Linux distributions are out of luck, because due to communication problems between P.O. and T.E. the software they need does not work. Best Regards Petr Olsak
license violation in tetex-texmf-3.0 fixed
Petr Olsak has notified me today, that tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz contains
three files which have been modified in a way that violates his license.
The modification had been done by me (as I wrongly assumed that the
license was GPL; in fact the license was "GPL with some additional
restrictions").
So, I just have updated these three files (reverted to the original
version) and replaced the "broken" tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz by the fixed
tetex-texmf-3.0po.tar.gz (I had announced that I won't make a new release.
Hey, this does not really count :-) I will take a small ammount of time
until CTAN will see the update.
>From the Changelog:
Do Mai 25 18:28:58 CEST 2006
* fixed a copyright violation, caused by distributing modified
files of cstex / cslatex under their original name. The fix
reverts to the original files. Affected files:
tex/cslatex/cslatex.ini
tex/csplain/cseplain.ini
tex/csplain/csplain.ini
This update just fixes the copyright violation. I cannot recommend to
download this "update". The version of cstex / cslatex contained in
teTeX-3.0 (both tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz and tetex-texmf-3.0po.tar.gz)
is severely broken (e.g. pdfcslatex produces dvi by default). So, if you
are interesed in using cstex / cslatex, better download and install the
latest version.
The official web site of cstex, http://math.feld.cvut.cz/olsak/cstex/
refers to ftp://math.feld.cvut.cz/pub/cstex/ for downloading the latest
version. I see that some version exists on CTAN, but I am not sure if
CTAN carries the latest version.
All the best,
Thomas
PS: the changes are so small, that I append the full diff to this mail.
diff -ru tetex-texmf/ChangeLog tetex-texmf-po/ChangeLog
--- tetex-texmf/ChangeLog 2005-02-06 20:05:00.0 +0100
+++ tetex-texmf-po/ChangeLog2006-05-25 19:13:19.0 +0200
@@ -1,3 +1,12 @@
+--- teTeX-3.0 po
+Do Mai 25 18:28:58 CEST 2006
+ * fixed a copyright violation, caused by distributing modified
+ files of cstex / cslatex under their original name. The fix
+ reverts to the original files. Affected files:
+ tex/cslatex/cslatex.ini
+ tex/csplain/cseplain.ini
+ tex/csplain/csplain.ini
+
--- teTeX-3.0
So Feb 6 13:05:44 CET 2005
* update fpl fonts
diff -ru tetex-texmf/release-tetex-texmf.txt
tetex-texmf-po/release-tetex-texmf.txt
--- tetex-texmf/release-tetex-texmf.txt 2005-02-06 20:04:02.0 +0100
+++ tetex-texmf-po/release-tetex-texmf.txt 2006-05-25 18:31:46.0
+0200
@@ -1 +1 @@
-3.0
+3.0po
diff -ru tetex-texmf/tex/cslatex/cslatex.ini
tetex-texmf-po/tex/cslatex/cslatex.ini
--- tetex-texmf/tex/cslatex/cslatex.ini 2004-03-26 20:09:41.0 +0100
+++ tetex-texmf-po/tex/cslatex/cslatex.ini 1998-12-04 18:47:38.0
+0100
@@ -5,15 +5,6 @@
%% tex -ini \let\enc=w \input cslatex.ini
%% see the csplain.doc in csplain.tar/zip for more details
-\ifx\pdfoutput\undefined
-\else
- \ifx\pdfoutput\relax
- \else
-\input pdftexconfig
-\pdfoutput=0
- \fi
-\fi
-
\ifx\enc\undefined \else %% Reencoding by encTeX is needed
\begingroup
\catcode`\{=1 \catcode`\}=2 \catcode`\#=6
diff -ru tetex-texmf/tex/csplain/cseplain.ini
tetex-texmf-po/tex/csplain/cseplain.ini
--- tetex-texmf/tex/csplain/cseplain.ini2004-03-26 20:09:59.0
+0100
+++ tetex-texmf-po/tex/csplain/cseplain.ini 1998-12-02 14:50:30.0
+0100
@@ -1,13 +1,4 @@
% Hacked from csplain.ini by Jan "Yenya" Kasprzak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
-\ifx\pdfoutput\undefined
-\else
- \ifx\pdfoutput\relax
- \else
-\input pdftexconfig
-\pdfoutput=0
- \fi
-\fi
-
\input csfonts % re-defines primitive \font
\input plain% format Plain
\restorefont% original meaning of primitive \font
diff -ru tetex-texmf/tex/csplain/csplain.ini
tetex-texmf-po/tex/csplain/csplain.ini
--- tetex-texmf/tex/csplain/csplain.ini 2004-03-26 20:09:47.0 +0100
+++ tetex-texmf-po/tex/csplain/csplain.ini 2000-02-25 11:49:18.0
+0100
@@ -1,12 +1,3 @@
-\ifx\pdfoutput\undefined
-\else
- \ifx\pdfoutput\relax
- \else
-\input pdftexconfig
-\pdfoutput=0
- \fi
-\fi
-
\input csfonts % re-defines primitive \font
\input plain% format Plain
\restorefont% original meaning of primitive \font
