I thought I'd try dejanews's "forward message to a friend" option, since the message isn't all that long... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message was forwarded to you from Deja News by [EMAIL PROTECTED] Deja News, the discussion network, offers free web-based access to more than 50,000 high-quality discussion forums. Come and visit us on the web at http://www.dejanews.com/=zzz_maf/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ (beginning of original message) Subject: LaTeX Project Public License From: David Carlisle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 1999/02/25 Newsgroups: comp.text.tex There are several files on ctan that have distribution notices that cause problems, either for ftp distribution from ctan itself, or more commonly cause problems for CD distributors. Common problems are: * Licences that allow `free' distribution, but ban `for profit' distribution. Such files may be distributed from CTAN, but may not be distributed on paid-for CDs which include texlive CD, many linux CDs and other such issues. Thus the licences cause a lot of work for distributors who need to obtain individual permission to distribute the files, or to individually check the conditions and remove files that they may not distribute. * Licences on generated `.sty' files that say `do not distribute this file'. Such licences cause no problems on ctan, as the .sty file is not on the archive, but make it illegal to include the package in `ready to run' distributions such as texlive as there the generated files must be included. * No licence at all. In at least some countries (including I am reliably informed, the United States of America) a file with no explicit permission to be distributed may not be distributed, even if the author has made it generally available by ftp from some site. It is of course completely up to the author of the software what licence to use. However it would be helpful if people would try to avoid these kind of problems when choosing a licence. While contacting some authors of contributed software on ctan, it became clear that many people would be happy to distribute their software `under the same conditions as LaTeX'. Unfortunately there was no easy way to express this, as the LaTeX distribution conditions, in the file legal.txt, were specific to the files in the base LaTeX distribution, and assigned copyright by name to the authors of the LaTeX kernel. So in the next LaTeX release (1998/12/01, soon) the licence has been reworded to be a generic licence that you may like to use. The file legal.txt will only contain the copyright notice, and then refer to the separate licence in the file lppl.txt. You may, if you wish, use this as an `off the shelf' licence for any software that you wish to distribute. (It does not have to be LaTeX related.) In the next release it will be used for the base, graphics, tools releases, and Sebastian Rahtz plans to use it on psnfss after it is next updated. As the LaTeX release is not quite ready, but this LPPL has been mentioned already on comp.text.tex I will post the current draft of the document here. (As in the rest of LaTeX, spelling is based on American, rather than English, conventions, so licence has an odd spelling for the rest of this message.) David Carlisle LaTeX3 Project ================lppl.txt========================================== LaTeX Project Public License ============================ LPPL Version 1.0 1999-02-17 Copyright 1999 LaTeX3 Project Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but modification is not allowed. Preamble ======== The LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL) is the license under which the base LaTeX distribution is distributed. As described below you may use this licence for any software that you wish to distribute. It may be particularly suitable if your software is TeX related (such as a LaTeX package file) but it may be used for any software, even if it is unrelated to TeX. To use this license, the files of your distribution should have an explicit copyright notice giving your name and the year, together with a reference to this license. A typical example would be %% pig.sty %% Copyright 2001 M. Y. Name % This program can redistributed and/or modified under the terms % of the LaTeX Project Public License Distributed from CTAN % archives in directory macros/latex/base/lppl.txt; either % version 1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. Given such a notice in the file, the conditions of this document would apply, with: `The Program' referring to the software `pig.sty' and `The Copyright Holder' referring to the person `M. Y. Name'. To see a real example, see the file legal.txt which carries the copyright notice for the base latex distribution. This license gives terms under which files of The Program may be distributed and modified. Individual files may have specific further constraints on modification, but no file should have restrictions on distribution other than those specified below. This is to ensure that a distributor wishing to distribute a complete unmodified copy of The Program need only check the conditions in this file, and does not need to check every file in The Program for extra restrictions. If you do need to modify the distribution terms of some files, do not refer to this license, instead distribute The Program under a different license. You may use the parts of the text of LPPL as a model for your own license, but your license should not directly refer to the LPPL or otherwise give the impression that The Program is distributed under the LPPL. The LaTeX Project Public License ================================ Terms And Conditions For Copying, Distribution And Modification =============================================================== WARRANTY ======== There is no warranty for The Program, to the extent permitted by applicable law. Except when otherwise stated in writing, The Copyright Holder provides the program `as is' without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program is with you. Should the program prove defective, you assume the cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction. In no event unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing will The Copyright Holder, or any of the individual authors named in the source for The Program, be liable to you for damages, including any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of any use of the program or out of inability to use the program (including but not limited to loss of data or data being rendered inaccurate or losses sustained by you or by third parties as a result of a failure of the program to operate with any other programs), even if such holder or other party has been advised of the possibility of such damages. DISTRIBUTION ============ Redistribution of unchanged files is allowed provided that all files that make up the distribution of The Program are distributed. In particular this means that The Program has to be distributed including its documentation if documentation was part of the original distribution. The distribution of The Program will contain a prominent file listing all the files covered by this license. If you receive only some of these files from someone, complain! The distribution of changed versions of certain files included in the The Program, and the reuse of code from The Program, are allowed under the following restrictions: * It is allowed only if the legal notice in the file does not expressly forbid it. See note below, under "Conditions on individual files". * You rename the file before you make any changes to it, unless the file explicitly says that renaming is not required. Any such changed files should be distributed under conditions that ensure that those files, and any files derived from them, will never be redistributed under the names used by the original files in the distribution of The Program. * You change any `identification string' in The Program to clearly indicate that the file is not part of the standard system. * If The Program includes an `error report address' so that errors may be reported to The Copyright Holder, or other specified addresses, this address must be changed in any modified versions of The Program, so that reports for files not maintained by the original program maintainers are directed to the maintainers of the changed files. * You acknowledge the source and authorship of the original version in the modified file. * You also distribute the unmodified version of the file or alternatively provide sufficient information so that the user of your modified file can be reasonably expected to be able to obtain an original, unmodified copy of The Program. For example, you may specify a URL to a site that you expect will freely provide the user with a copy of The Program (either the version on which your modification is based, or perhaps a later version). * If The The Program is intended to be used with, or is based on, LaTeX, then files with the following file extensions which have special meaning in LaTeX Software, have special modification rules under the license: - Files with extension `.ins' (installation files): these files may not be modified at all because they contain the legal notices that are placed in the generated files. - Files with extension `.fd' (LaTeX font definitions files): these files are allowed to be modified without changing the name, but only to enable use of all available fonts and to prevent attempts to access unavailable fonts. However, modified files are not allowed to be distributed in place of original files. - Files with extension `.cfg' (configuration files): these files can be created or modified to enable easy configuration of the system. The documentation in cfgguide.tex in the base LaTeX distribution describes when it makes sense to modify or generate such files. The above restrictions are not intended to prohibit, and hence do not apply to, the updating, by any method, of a file so that it becomes identical to the latest version of that file in The Program. ======================================================================== NOTES ===== We believe that these requirements give you the freedom you to make modifications that conform with whatever technical specifications you wish, whilst maintaining the availability, integrity and reliability of The Program. If you do not see how to achieve your goal whilst adhering to these requirements then read the document cfgguide.tex in the base LaTeX distribution for suggestions. Because of the portability and exchangeability aspects of systems like LaTeX, The LaTeX3 Project deprecates the distribution of non-standard versions of components of LaTeX or of generally available contributed code for them but such distributions are permitted under the above restrictions. The document modguide.tex in the base LaTeX distribution details the reasons for the legal requirements detailed above. Even if The Program is unrelated to LaTeX, the argument in modguide.tex may still apply, and should be read before a modified version of The Program is distributed. Conditions on individual files ============================== The individual files may bear additional conditions which supersede the general conditions on distribution and modification contained in this file. If there are any such files, the distribution of The Program will contain a prominent file that lists all the exceptional files. Typical examples of files with more restrictive modification conditions would be files that contain the text of copyright notices. * The conditions on individual files differ only in the extent of *modification* that is allowed. * The conditions on *distribution* are the same for all the files. Thus a (re)distributor of a complete, unchanged copy of The Program need meet only the conditions in this file; it is not necessary to check the header of every file in the distribution to check that a distribution meets these requirements. 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