On Thu, 2002-07-18 at 13:06, Boris Veytsman wrote: > I think we finally got to understanding what is allowed and what is > not in TeX and LaTeX licensing -- or at least in the licenses > intentions. > > Right now I as an end user and developer have the following rights: > > R1. Change the appearance of any document I got by adding the line > inputting my set of macros to the document. > > R2. Change the appearance of all documents by (1) using instead of the > command "latex file" a command "modified-latex file" or (2) > passing the corresponding options to tex or (3) using my own > version of tex with different name. > > R3. Distribute my macros, modified versions of latex, tex, fonts etc., > for profit or not, as long as I take care they will not be > confused with the original tex, latex and fonts, and (in case of > latex) impose the same "do not confuse users" restriction on the > modified product (TeX is trademarked, so this restriction would be > redundant for it). > > Besides these right I have the following assurances: > > A1. If I issue the command "latex file", the appearance of the > resulting document will be exactly the same as intended by the > author with discrepancy no more than tens of Angstroms. > > A2. If I send my document to be latexed to my publisher, colleague, > friend, the appearance of the document on their desks will be > exactly same as on mine. This is true whether they use Debian > Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Macintosh or Palm Pilot. > > A3. The propeties A1 and A2 are going to be there whether the document > is processed today, tomorrow or in any foreseeable future. > > Now what other rights are you talking about? This could not be my > rights as a user a developer -- I have all that I need. Obviously it > must be some other rights. Probably *your* rights. I take from the > discussion that some people here want the right to modify parts of the > TeX suite while still calling the thing TeX and LaTeX. In other words > you want the right to change files on your server in such a way that > "apt-get upgrade" will make my machine produce slightly different > documents than my colleagues' machines. Worse than that, you want the > right to dump these changes on other Debian machines -- while I can > stop using your verson of LaTeX, I cannot presume my colleagues' > admins are clueful enough to make this decision.
No, not at all. I think that your R3 right is the point of contention; we do not believe that the draft of the LPPL we've seen confers that right. > Some people say they need this right to make (La)TeX more secure. This > argument is purely hypothetical: there was no vulnerabilities reported > during all the years of TeX and LaTeX existence, which is longer, than > the existence of Linux or popularity of Unix and C. On the other case > the dangers that LPPL tries to prevent are quite real: the story with > "improved" CM fonts comes to my mind. Again, the people who improved > CM fonts might think that they made a service to the community; they > might consider the changes to be small. Nevertheless they are NOT > small for me and I do not want this service. You break A1--A3 without > meaningfully adding anything to R1--R3. Security is only one of many good reasons to change LaTeX, and it's certainly a valid one, even for LaTeX. The lack of security problems in LaTeX is possible a happy accident of history rather than a real virtue of its code. Let's take an example that will likely resonate with typesetters a bit more: the euro. How did you arrange to add the euro symbol to TeX and LaTeX? What would have happened if I would have needed a euro symbol before it was added? > Thanks, but no thanks. I do not want you to have this freedom. I do > not want you to send me these "maybe altered" weights. I do not want > you to be able to send them to anybody. I abhor the thought that my > business associates, colleagues or anybody else might use your weights > UNKNOWINGLY. You have the right to distribute any weights as long as > you call them deb-kilograms or Pickwickian kilograms -- but please do > not meddle with the standard weights. This is a restriction the Debian Project can live with. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
