I think Frank et al's concerns could be addressed fairly easily by requiring distributors of modified versions of the entire LaTeX suite to document the changes and include the location of that documentation in the diagnostic output of latex, and requiring distributors of modified versions of separately-distributed style/class files to do the same, with a waiver of the documentation requirement if the file/suite is renamed (thereby not misrepresenting the modified version as any longer being a substitute for the original). This certainly would pass the DFSG and would clearly inform users of what sort of LaTeX they're getting.
Then again, maybe I'm missing the point :-) Yes I think so. Notifying users is part of it but not the main part. LaTeX is a document markup language the primary aim is to have portable documents. Thus anything that claims to be latex (or tex, or the computer modern fonts) should produce the same output. LaTeX has the extra constraint that unlike a compiled program the full source of latex is visible to every latex document. Some people have suggested that latex should allow arbitrary changes but only allow the name "latex" to be used if the resulting program meets some published interface. That is fine for a compiled program which can implement a published interface via an implementation that isn't seen by the application. However it is a technical non starter for a macro language. If you change latex in _any_ way, adding \relax to any definition then the observable behaviour of the program will alter. So for a macro language saying that it meets some published interface is equivalent to saying that no changes have been made at all. C the language is specified by international standard. It makes sense to talk of different free or not free implementations of that language. You simply can not do that for LaTeX. A different implementation will implement a different language. That is just the way TeX works. So LaTeX has the perfectly reasonable (and apparently DFSG compliant) restriction that if you change the code so that it no longer implements the same language, you call it something different. David _____________________________________________________________________ This message has been checked for all known viruses by Star Internet delivered through the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service. For further information visit http://www.star.net.uk/stats.asp or alternatively call Star Internet for details on the Virus Scanning Service. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
