Understanding your goal a bit , I think I can state that it is not
possible to release software that is both free and prevents users from
being given a modified copy.
I agree with that as you write it, but I don't believe that saying you
must call the modified copy something else is the same
Registering LaTeX as a trademark would have given you much more power
(i.e. real power) to discourage such things without requiring such high
standards for others wanting to play around with the code.
It wouldn't have given any protection at all to users of the package
longtable (which wasn't
On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 09:38:47AM +0100, David Carlisle wrote:
But you have *no* way to assure this, short of trademarking the name
latex.
Of course it is true as written, but it ignores the fact that LPPL has
been remarkably successful in its stated aims.
Prior to the latex2e licence
Err, are you sure this is largely due to the license change, and not to
other changes in the Unix world?
I don't want to disapoint you but it's most likely true that most tex
use doesn't happen in the unix world:-) (although as it happens a good
part of latex was written on a Debian
David Carlisle [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I think the one area where there will probably be disagreement is over
the renaming rule however that eventually gets worded.
However the disagreements there from the Debian side seem to be
characterisable as it can't work or I'd have no respect for
Um, no. The real objection is: it's not DFSG free.
Last time I asked for an objective list of places where people thought
LPPL didn't meet the DFSG, someone posted such a list and Frank I think
addressed all the raised points in his last draft, didn't he?
The other comments are attempts to
David Carlisle [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
However the disagreements there from the Debian side seem to be
characterisable as it can't work or I'd have no respect for someone
who uses such a licence.
I regret making that comment, and I apologize for it. begins digging
deeper I intended to
Frank Mittelbach [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Walter, i think, asked if one can't remove that checking code through another
(independent) modification. The answer is yes, easily, but only by either
- forking the latex kernel, ie running on a non-latex in which this whole
discussion is
But you have *no* way to assure this, short of trademarking the name
latex.
That is a very tired argument.
Of course it is true as written, but it ignores the fact that LPPL has
been remarkably successful in its stated aims.
Prior to the latex2e licence (which from which LPPL was derived)
On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 09:38:47AM +0100, David Carlisle wrote:
But you have *no* way to assure this, short of trademarking the name
latex.
That is a very tired argument.
Of course it is true as written, but it ignores the fact that LPPL has
been remarkably successful in its stated aims.
David Carlisle [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Prior to the latex2e licence (which from which LPPL was derived)
latex could be (and often was) locally modified and re-distributed.
It got so bad by around 1990 that passing a latex document from one site
to another was largely a matter of luck.
Perhaps latex is a miserably poor interchange format. Or perhaps
the language needed a clear standard and clear documentation. After
all, the way the world of C programmers solved this problem was by
careful standardization, not by insisting that there should be Only
One C Compiler.
It
On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 09:38:47AM +0100, David Carlisle wrote:
But you have *no* way to assure this, short of trademarking the name
latex.
That is a very tired argument.
Of course it is true as written, but it ignores the fact that LPPL has
been remarkably successful in its stated aims.
Freedom includes the right to do things that you (and even I) think
are stupid. Debian stands for freedom.
And lppl is intended to give you the right to do stupid things (yes
you can do them), but without perjudicing the right of all latex
users to have a latex working correctly and with
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)
Date: 22 Jul 2002 02:27:04 -0700
David Carlisle [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Prior to the latex2e licence (which from which LPPL was derived)
latex could be (and often was) locally modified and re-distributed.
It got so bad by around 1990
Javier Bezos writes:
Freedom includes the right to do things that you (and even I) think
are stupid. Debian stands for freedom.
And lppl is intended to give you the right to do stupid things (yes
you can do them), but without perjudicing the right of all latex
users to have a
Javier Bezos [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
And lppl is intended to give you the right to do stupid things (yes
you can do them), but without perjudicing the right of all latex
users to have a latex working correctly and with documents which
can be distributed freely.
Huh? Even if it were in the
David Carlisle [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
LaTeX is distributed with a free Licence that most independent people
have taken as meeting the DFSG.
Where did you get this from? I have doubts as to whether any
independent people (i.e. not affiliated with Debian or the LaTeX
project) have really
On Mon, 2002-07-22 at 03:38, David Carlisle wrote:
But you have *no* way to assure this, short of trademarking the name
latex.
That is a very tired argument.
And this is not?
Of course it is true as written, but it ignores the fact that LPPL has
been remarkably successful in its
On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 01:22:50PM -0500, Jeff Licquia wrote:
Don't reinvent the wheel. If you want the legal assurance of a
trademark, just go and get one.
It seems that people who havn't been willing to act in good faith (eg.
people who wouldn't follow guidelines for this if they didn't
On Mon, 2002-07-22 at 11:05, Boris Veytsman wrote:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)
Date: 22 Jul 2002 02:27:04 -0700
Perhaps latex is a miserably poor interchange format. Or perhaps
the language needed a clear standard and clear documentation. After
all, the way the
From: Jeff Licquia [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 22 Jul 2002 15:02:28 -0500
Would it really contradict your professed goals to have three
LaTeX-alike systems floating around, one named LaTeX, one named FooTeX,
and one named BarTeX?
Of course not. Actually there are several systems floating
Jeff,
I am afraid you do not know about the recent history of gcc.
[...]
We, as a project, understand this perhaps better than you do. We
currently ship three different C compilers for woody: 2.95 in most
cases, 2.96 for certain architectures, and 3.0 for one architecture
Boris Veytsman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
To say the truth, it is ok to have kgcc, egcs, gcc on the same
system. The problem is, you need to decide what is *the* $CC for each
program.
And if it's posix, there's c89, which is guaranteed on Posix systems
to be the ANSI C compiler.
But there
Frank Mittelbach [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
The point is not the fork on that level it is the fork on the package
level. LaTeX users, just as pdflatex users, etc. expect their documents if
processed at one site with LaTeX (or with pdflatex, etc) to come out the same
if processed with LaTeX (or
Thomas Bushnell, BSG writes:
From tripman.tex:
If somebody claims to have a correct implementation of \TeX, I will not
believe it until I see that \.{TRIP.TEX} is translated properly.
I propose, in fact, that a program must meet two criteria before it
can justifiably be called
Steve Langasek writes:
On Sun, Jul 21, 2002 at 01:29:36AM +0200, Frank Mittelbach wrote:
Thomas Bushnell, BSG writes:
Indeed, I can do two things:
Make a derivate work of latex, which is variant, and called
special-non-latex.
Make a package with no derivatives
Frank Mittelbach [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
by producing special-non-latex you are required to change its identifaction
strings which means that this program will identify itself to the user as
not-latex no matter what it is called as a debian package. Of course by
packaging it with a
Frank Mittelbach [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
- reads in files (and ignores their content)
- writes out two or three files by dumping the results expected by TRIP.TEX
then i only have to feel happy about it to be able to call it TeX. :-) in
other words you can always trip wordings (as
Frank Mittelbach [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
i think so yes, for example, Don's home page
other may be able to refer you to more explicit quotes.
Knuth's home page is large. Do you have a specific reference?
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of unsubscribe.
Thomas Bushnell, BSG writes:
Frank Mittelbach [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
i think so yes, for example, Don's home page
other may be able to refer you to more explicit quotes.
Knuth's home page is large. Do you have a specific reference?
sorry, seems i have thrown you a red herring
Scripsit Frank Mittelbach [EMAIL PROTECTED]
probably none (definitely not for the 72 individual font names. Nevertheless
Debian wouldn't get a good press if it would generate modified versions of
such programs and fonts and distributed them under the original names.
Please avoid the fallacy
Henning Makholm writes:
Scripsit Frank Mittelbach [EMAIL PROTECTED]
probably none (definitely not for the 72 individual font names.
Nevertheless
Debian wouldn't get a good press if it would generate modified versions of
such programs and fonts and distributed them under the
On Sun, 2002-07-21 at 04:20, Frank Mittelbach wrote:
btw, would it be acceptable to you if LPPL would say,
in case of modification you either
- do what LPPL asks for now (i.e. rename ...), or
- you keep the LaTeX package file name but replace
\ProvidesPackage{varioref}
On Fri, Jul 19, 2002 at 04:04:33PM +0100, David Carlisle wrote:
it is allowed.
pdftex for example produces different output from the same input.
you could use the command latex for that as it doesn't involve any
changes in LPPL'ed code, although tetex calls the command pdflatex
as a user
Nick Phillips writes:
On Fri, Jul 19, 2002 at 04:04:33PM +0100, David Carlisle wrote:
It is not reasonable that the author of a package such as
indentfirst.sty
for example (which consists of exactly 4 TeX tokens) should be expected
to go to the trouble of trying to legally register
Boris Veytsman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
B. The *name* TeX is reserved for Knuth's program. If you program
is called TeX, it must satisfy triptest. You can NOT correct bugs
in this program, you cannot do Debian QA for it -- you either take
it as is or rename it.
No. You are
Sam Hartman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
But you're right, if the LaTeX license allows this it may be DFSG free.
And, we can create another package that has a symlink from latex to
patched-not-really-latex. That other package would not be, in any
way, a derivate of latex, and thus it isn't
David Carlisle [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
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.
But you have *no* way to assure this, short of trademarking
Boris Veytsman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 04:15:20 -0400
From: Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED]
If the core can be changed in any way without changing it directly,
then you can break output exactly as well by this mechanism as you
could by editing it directly.
Thomas Bushnell, BSG writes:
David Carlisle [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
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.
But you have *no*
Thomas Bushnell, BSG writes:
Boris Veytsman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
B. The *name* TeX is reserved for Knuth's program. If you program
is called TeX, it must satisfy triptest. You can NOT correct bugs
in this program, you cannot do Debian QA for it -- you either take
Frank Mittelbach [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
No. You are quite wrong. Provided it still passes triptest, you can
call it TeX. You certainly can correct bugs or do Debian QA, provided
the changes still pass triptest.
sorry but I fear it's you that is quite wrong. The triptest is only
21-Jul-02 01:29 Frank Mittelbach wrote:
Thomas Bushnell, BSG writes:
Indeed, I can do two things:
Make a derivate work of latex, which is variant, and called
special-non-latex.
Make a package with no derivatives of latex at all, which contains a
single symlink: 'latex -
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 14:12:44 -0400
From: Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 12:55:43PM +0200, Javier Bezos wrote:
but the documents created using that distribution. If I get a
document by John Smith (somehow), how can I see if _his_
system had a modified
On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 12:55:43PM +0200, Javier Bezos wrote:
but the documents created using that distribution. If I get a
document by John Smith (somehow), how can I see if _his_
system had a modified latex?
Others (eg Boris) seem to be saying that the Latex developers don't
mind if you
I think you are mistaken. You are assuming that the engine used to process
those macros will also not be changed; it would be quite possible to change
LaTeX in such a way that it produced identical output from all valid LaTeX
input whilst adding other functionality, if you modified it to use
This is a really good argument *in favour* of LPPL! If someone
adds support for Klingon by modifying the LaTeX kernel, the
resulting documents will have a restricted distribution
because they won't compile correctly in other systems. This
is an _actual_ restriction. But if instead a package
On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 09:28:22AM +0200, Javier Bezos wrote:
Of course, I won't tell you that. I repeat that the internals *can*
be changed without touching a single file from the LaTeX kernel,
and currenty there are several packages doing that. An example:
the hyperref package patches some
Additionally, there is the question
of defining non-functional data; some kinds of data, such as fonts,
have functional impact
for a system like latex the fonts (or at least their metrics) have as
much impact as the rest of the system. Modifying the font metrics is
even more likely to change
you missed the point, which is that the changes in the Latex kernel
had to be made in order for Klingon (or whatever language) to work.
Don't tell me that there will never be a need to change the internals
in order to make something work. You can't anticipate everything that
will happen in
Jeff == Jeff Licquia [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Jeff On Wed, 2002-07-17 at 01:31, Frank Mittelbach wrote:
Branden Robinson writes: Perhaps the LaTeX community should
appoint a spokesman to the Debian Project so that we do not
get contradictory statements about what is
Glenn Maynard said:
If the core can be changed in any way without changing it directly,
then you can break output exactly as well by this mechanism as you
could by editing it directly.
So what...?
If so, then there's no point in forcing people to use it; they can break
stuff anyway.
Yes
In article [EMAIL PROTECTED], David Carlisle [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
If you want more and want to change the kernel itself rather than
redefining it on the fly (perhaps just for optimisation reasons) you can
do that as well as long as you don't call it latex, see the quote from
Would a statement in the license that *either* of the following must
happen be acceptable to the LaTeX project?
* The modified copy of the Program is distributed under a name which
clearly distinguishes it from Standard LaTeX, the unmodified copy.
* Any files which share names between
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 04:15:20 -0400
From: Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED]
If the core can be changed in any way without changing it directly,
then you can break output exactly as well by this mechanism as you
could by editing it directly.
No, because to change the core you need to
On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 09:28:58AM +0100, David Carlisle wrote:
In that case probably it's best if we just all come back then.
It will be a lot of work finalising the details of a rewrite of LPPL
and if the only benefit of that is that you declare LaTeX suitable for
the free part of Debian,
From: Sam Hartman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 06:20:32 -0400
The TeX license is OK because it mandates what we call the program,
but does not say anything about the API. Even if the binary is called
uglytex, it's still easy for me to run it over .tex files. If those
files
Boris == Boris Veytsman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Boris This is exactly the same with LaTeX. If you create a new
Boris format newlatex.fmt and symlink /usr/bin/tex to
Boris /usr/bin/newlatex (this is the UNIX TeX way to use
Boris formats), then you have a complete freedom to load
On Thu, 2002-07-18 at 03:28, David Carlisle wrote:
Additionally, there is the question
of defining non-functional data; some kinds of data, such as fonts,
have functional impact
for a system like latex the fonts (or at least their metrics) have as
much impact as the rest of the system.
Well, yes. OTOH, substituting pictures can also change layout, and
pictures are clearly non-functional data.
document formatting systems have fonts they use in all documents.
They don't usually have pictures they use in all documents.
Changing the font metrics isn't like changing a picture
On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 12:55:43PM +0200, Javier Bezos wrote:
but the documents created using that distribution. If I get a
document by John Smith (somehow), how can I see if _his_
system had a modified latex?
Others (eg Boris) seem to be saying that the Latex developers don't
mind if you
On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, David Carlisle wrote:
Changing the font metrics isn't like changing a picture file
it's like changing your png renderer so that the same file produces a
different image. ie the result document changes with no apparent change
to that source document.
I agree with David -
Javier == Javier Bezos [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Javier Thanks for saying apparently :-). We are repeating and
Javier repeating again than you can rewrite latex in full, if you
Javier want.
MMM, someone on the Debian side here should write up an instructive
rant on what source code
On Thu, 2002-07-18 at 13:22, Mark Rafn wrote:
On Thu, 18 Jul 2002, David Carlisle wrote:
Changing the font metrics isn't like changing a picture file
it's like changing your png renderer so that the same file produces a
different image. ie the result document changes with no apparent
Branden Robinson writes:
The ease of alternatives to modifying source code is not important. The
right of the user to create modifications and derived works is.
Interestingly, Frank Mittelbach is asserting that it is not the intent
of the LPPL to forbid mere modification of LaTeX
On Wed, 2002-07-17 at 01:31, Frank Mittelbach wrote:
Branden Robinson writes:
Perhaps the LaTeX community should appoint a spokesman to the Debian
Project so that we do not get contradictory statements about what is
acceptable?
Branden, pardon me, but i think this is funny. seems that
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
These simple conditions on the overall program name sound like they
fall within the scope of DFSG #4. Restrictions on individual file
names do not.
Those conditions [on cm fonts] _are_ at the level of individual file
names.
You can not call your font metric file cmr10.tfm unless it is
From: Jeff Licquia [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 17 Jul 2002 02:02:25 -0500
One possible important difference: there is, I would imagine, a much
higher degree of consensus about the Debian Social Contract and DFSG
within Debian than I expect there is in the LaTeX user community over
licensing
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
David Carlisle [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
These simple conditions on the overall program name sound like they
fall within the scope of DFSG #4. Restrictions on individual file
names do not.
Those conditions [on cm fonts] _are_ at the level of individual file
names.
You can not call your
That's not true. He hasn't registered a trademark on the name, I
believe. So the most the license can do is prohibit you from calling
a *derivative work* of Knuth's cmr10 file cmr10.tfm.
er yes that's the usual rider. Although it's not clear to me that you
can do that and still use it with
On Wed, 2002-07-17 at 05:29, David Carlisle wrote:
Those conditions [on cm fonts] _are_ at the level of individual file
names.
As a data point, there is some disagreement within Debian as to whether
non-functional components, such as documentation, should be held to the
same standard as
Javier Bezos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Walter Landry said:
Here is a hypothetical. Let's say that someone wants to add support for
Klingon into Latex. So they hack something together which, by necessity,
changes a few standard files, and it works for them without breaking
anything
On Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 11:23:17AM +0100, David Carlisle wrote:
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
Greetings:
I apologize for butting in in the ongoing discussion. Moreover, I am
neither a lawyer nor a LaTeX3 team member (a couple of my programs are
in the distribution, both under GPL and LPPL). Nevertheless I hope
that my thoughts might be of use.
I am a Debian and LaTeX user, so the
On Jul 16, Boris Veytsman wrote:
To summarize: I think LPPL strikes a necessary balance between
standardization and flexibility. This balance was tested by 20+ years
of TeX, which is licensed under exactly same conditions.
I don't think anyone here has a problem with a license that says If
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 07:52:09PM -0400, Boris Veytsman wrote:
B. The *name* TeX is reserved for Knuth's program. If you program
is called TeX, it must satisfy triptest. You can NOT correct bugs
in this program, you cannot do Debian QA for it -- you either take
it as is or rename
Boris Veytsman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I think Debian team overlooks a couple of points.
1. Debian already uses software other than LaTeX under the no changes
unless the files are renamed clause. This is Don Knuth's TeX and
MF suite *and* the relevant fonts. Let me remind you that the
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 05:47:20PM -0700, Walter Landry wrote:
These are nice goals, but they do not make free software. Debian's
definition of free software means that it satisfies the DFSG.
Whatever your motives may be, if your program doesn't satisfy the
DFSG, then it doesn't go in main.
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 19:18:02 -0500
From: Chris Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I don't think anyone here has a problem with a license that says If
your LaTeX doesn't pass such and such a validation suite, you can't
call it LaTeX, but you can do whatever else you want to do with it.
This
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 03:41:42 +0300
From: Richard Braakman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 07:52:09PM -0400, Boris Veytsman wrote:
B. The *name* TeX is reserved for Knuth's program. If you program
is called TeX, it must satisfy triptest. You can NOT correct bugs
in
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