The freedom to create these "personal versions" of software is the only protection that our thousands or millions of users worldwide have against software authors who are unresponsive, missing, or antagonistic. It is our insurance policy that we will be free to continue to do what we believe is in the best interest of our users, even when upstream disagrees. If the Latex developers don't believe this is important enough that they will choose a license that complies with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, that's once again their right as copyright holders, but it definitely makes it incompatible with Debian's stated goals.
Speaking as a LaTeX developer, and as one of the authors of the LPPL I agree with those aims and would say that LPPL is perfectly compatible with them. I agree that anyone should be free to modify latex in any way and distribute that modification. I just don't agree that they should leave my email address at the top as the place where people should report bugs, and I don't agree that they should call the software by the same name, so as to deliberately trick users who believe they are using one piece of software into using a different piece of software. As a matter of fact we did read the DFSG while drafting the original version 1 of the LPPL. I believed then and still believe now that it is compatible. Nothing in any of the multitude of threads has shown any real bar on LPPL being DFSG compatible. Some minor wording issues that Frank has been addressing, but nothing in principle. What has been clear is that some people at Debian don't like clause 4 and are trying to force licences that do not require that clause. If Debian want to do that that is their right of course, but it is not the current published guidelines. If Debian does change its guidelines and drop clause 4 then clearly LPPL would not meet the new criteria. Neither would the TeX or Computer Modern licences. If Debian wish to distribute its core free Debian distribution witout tex (and presumably without texinfo) again that is their right and there is nothing we in the LaTeX project can do about that as we don't control the Licence on TeX. 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]
