Having been away I just have just (rather depressingly) caught up with the August archive of latex licence discussion.
There seems to be the usual quota of misinformation concerning the tex licence, but one particular point was raised. As has been mentioned the "rename clause" of computer modern licence was invoked to cause linux distributions to stop distributing modified cm fonts (ie tfms different from Knuth's, not just as Thomas Bushnell has claimed, the .mf source files). The text of Knuth's statement appears to have been removed from all the obvious places where it was posted at the time, but I turned up a copy at this address: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=knuth+romlig.mf&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=5nd91y6eix.fsf%40sun.dante.de&rnum=6 It is prefixed (In German, which I can't read, sorry) by a statement from the president of German TeX users group, but it contains the full text (in English) of Knuth's statement asserting that he believed that the distribution of the modified tfms was "in direct violation of my stipulation on the copyright page of Computers & Typesetting, Volume E." Further on he goes on to say Dear friends, I decided to put these fonts into the public domain rather than to make them proprietary; all I have asked is that nobody change them, UNLESS THE NAME IS CHANGED, so that every user can obtain equivalent results on all computer systems, now and 50 years from now. I went to enormous efforts to make TeX and METAFONT systems equivalent on hundreds of different computers, and to make them archival as no commercial software has ever been. If you want to improve the fonts, go ahead, but DON'T GIVE YOUR FONTS THE SAME NAME AS MINE. I insist that every font named cmr10 have the same font metrics, so that TeX will choose exactly the same line breaks and page breaks on every computer system in the world. This compatibility must be enforced by peer pressure (boycotts, bad publicity , etc.), to anybody who breaks the rules. The TeX Users Group is now deciding how best to condemn this action and to keep the cancer from infecting too many systems. David _____________________________________________________________________ This message has been checked for all known viruses by Star Internet delivered through the MessageLabs Virus Scanning Service. For further information visit http://www.star.net.uk/stats.asp or alternatively call Star Internet for details on the Virus Scanning Service.
