Thomas Esser [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Fundamentalism is a Bad Thing. About politics, religion, licensing
or anything. And the fact is that teTeX 2.0 have lost usefulness
because of such fundamentalism.
I will check if the license of the listings package is ok for free
software and put the package back if this turn out to be true.
Sounds like it to me.
I don't agree with your opinion on licensing. Being free software is
a great plus for teTeX. All those nonfree packages are still
available to TeX users, they are just not part of teTeX. On the
other hand, teTeX is now free and can be included as part of a
book-cdrom, linux distributions, other free software packages etc.
As to the fundamentalism: much free software (TeX being a notable
exception) nowadays consists of reimplementations of proprietary
software. If you take fundamentalism aside, there is no reason to
start developing a replacement for proprietary software if your
investment of time and money to get free software of equal utility and
quality will be more than a license for the proprietary software would
have cost you. The fundamentalism of Stallman and others is
responsible for software now being available which is the better
choice even for non-fundamentalists.
You consider yourself morally superior because you don't let your
choices be reined in by fundamentalism. But without the
fundamentalists paving the way beside the established paths, you would
not even have a choice.
To Robin: no I don't think that multicol.sty is nonfree. I remember
that there was a lengthy discussion about that with the outcome of
the current license. Is there any reason to recheck the license of
multicol.sty?
Well, the licence has been changed to address the previous
objections, and so it was appropriately reassessed.
Shall we really restart it all?
Since Carsten Heinze did the same IIRC (rewording all things that
previously were requirements into wishes), it would be fair to give
listings.sty the same reassessment under those changed conditions
that multicol.sty received.
From taking a look at the wording in TeXlive7, I fail to see a
problem. The additional terms are
%% However, if you distribute the package as part of a commercial
%% product or if you use the package to prepare a commercial document
%% (books, journals, and so on), I'd like to encourage you to make a
%% donation to the LaTeX3 fund. The size of this `license fee' should
%% depend on the value of the package for your product. For more
%% information about LaTeX see http://www.latex-project.org
%%
%% No matter whether you use the package for a commercial or
%% non-commercial document, please send me a copy of the document (.dvi,
%% .ps, .pdf, hardcopy, etc.) to support further development---it is
%% easier to introduce new features or simplify things if I see how the
%% package is used by other people.
I'd like to encourage you is not a license requirement. [...]
please send me can hardly be seen as a requirement in that context.
I just checked the current source on CTAN which also contains
% Modification advice.
% Permission is granted to modify the listings package as well as
% lstdrvrs.dtx. You are not allowed to distribute a modified version
% of the package or lstdrvrs.dtx unless you change the file names and
% provide the original files. In any case it is better to contact the
% address below; other users will welcome removed bugs, new features,
% and additional programming languages.
This is labelled as advice, and indeed, it contains nothing that
would not already be demanded by the LPPL.
In short, I do not see how the package places additional restrictions
beyond the LPPL. It asks for a few things in words that are clearly
not intended to form an actual _requirement_, and it goes to some
length to again stress a few points about the LPPL.
If I am mistaken in my assessment, I'll be glad to here just where.
But in my opinion I really am unable to see right now where the
problem is.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
