On Sat, 2002-07-20 at 11:01, William F Hammond wrote: > > Jeff Licquia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, who seems to be the Debian spokesman,
Uh, oh. Does this mean I get blamed for stuff now? :-) > writes in debian-legal@lists.debian.org at 19 Jul 2002 16:09:59 -0500, > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200207/msg00264.html > > > - A program is modifiable if a user has the legal right to change the > > program's behavior in an arbitrary way without excessive inconvenience > > or requirements. > > Absolutely. The LaTeX world has always had that. There are, however, > both good and bad approaches. > > I hope we are straight on the distinction between users and package > or class authors. Everybody in the LaTeX world has freedom, but > the mechanisms for breakage-free exercise of that freedom depend on > the role. > > > Now, the sticky word here is "excessive". In one respect, LD_PRELOAD > > can be used to change any program's behavior no matter the license, but > > I think we'd agree that this would be an excessive requirement. > > Sure. > > > Taken at a "stupid level", your requirement for filename changes also > > seems excessive. At face value, the cascading change requirements > > (change references in this other file, which is also a change requiring > > rename, which means more references to the new file have to be changed, > > etc.) would make it nearly impossible to practically make changes to > > LaTeX. Further, it's not clear whether further modifications beyond the > > first set require yet more name changes, for reasons I've discussed > > elsewhere. > > I don't follow the allusion to cascading change requirements. > > Could someone pose a simple example? Or was the cascade a nightmare? OK, here's what I was thinking. Let's imagine something like LaTeX licensed under something like the LPPL, and let's also assume that I'm going to hack it. So, I edit "article.sty". OK, no problem; just rename it to "article-hacked.sty". Oops, now things aren't working right. "book.sty" references "article.sty", and it's pulling in the old one. That's not right, so I edit "book.sty" to reference "article-hacked.sty". Since this is a change, I also need to change "book.sty" to "book-hacked.sty". Shucks. There's a reference to "book.sty" in "brochure.sty". Change the reference to "brochure.sty", rename to "brochure-hacked.sty", continue. Darnit, "latex.cnf" refers to "brochure.sty"! Edit "latex.cnf"... Now, I can see your objection a mile away. Remember that I said that this was on a "stupid level", as in "All I know about my rights concerning modification of this program is what I read in the LPPL." Also, take my following paragraphs into account, where I recognize that this isn't the whole story. Also, don't take my specific files seriously; I haven't the faintest clue how LaTeX's internals work. The point is that I need to be able to hack LaTeX, and at some level, there's bound to be internal references to other files which need to change. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
