Am 25.10.2011 10:30, schrieb Keith J. Schultz:
O.K. I will jump in here.
Intellectual property rights are often a great big gray zone.
Maybe, it is time the author of the package speaks up himself
what is meant.
That would help.
Also, it does seem clear if the code being used or parts thereof are from a
different party, who may or may not have rights which they will enforce.
Furthermore, the author at least signals, s/he wants to keep control of the
code.
The use of "discouraged" indicates that the author or a third party may or may
not
go to court over the modified version. It is very clear that the author does
not want
modified versions being distributed. I admit that stronger legal terms should
have been
used.
It's clear that he wants to keep control of the code of the package
called ucharclasses . What is not clear at all, is, whether one might
borrow freely from this package when writing a different package. This
issue is not covered exactly as this. It is allowed to use the package
freely. A definition of "use" is missing. One might argue, that copying
the text, changing it and calling it the foobar package, is use.
As the author has used this fuzzy legal terminology, it very hard to say how a
judge might
rule. It is like parking a car just because the car is not parked inside of a
no parking zone
you could still get a fine.
Exactly: copyright laws still apply. So a restriction in a software
license is usually nonsense: Everything that is forbidden by law need
not be forbidden by license. Everything that is not forbidden by law
can't be forbidden by license. (This might depend on the judicion, so
it's probably wrong in the USA.)
It is sane not to include this package in TeXLive as to avoid the complications
above, as
you never know want a contributor may do with the code and unknowingly cause
problems
and why should TeXLive put effort into a package that is not freely available,
to ensure that they
right side of the law.
regards
Keith.
Am 23.10.2011 um 18:59 schrieb Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd):
msk...@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote:
On Sun, 23 Oct 2011, Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:
clearly they are -- but in terms of actual requirements. Since
you are only "discouraged from" and not "prohibited from"
making changes, I believe that a court of law would find that
there is no actual inconsistency in practice.
Do note that the ucharclasses package isn't covered by the LPPL at all.
The author is free to put whatever license he wants on it, and whether
the license he chose is consistent with the LPPL isn't particularly
relevant. We might as well as whether it's consistent with the GNU GPL
or the Argentinian Constitution.
The issue that Vafa raised was as follows :
No, the license of the package in not LPPL.
In fact, it is non-free and that is why it
is not included in TeXLive. The README in "License" section says:
You
may freely use this package, but you are discouraged from
modifying this package and then redistributing it. Instead,
please contact me (ideally on the XeTeX mailing list) and
we can discuss the changes you wish to make. If they
benefit everyone, they will be worked in as a new version.
and the point that I was making is that "discouraged from"
is not the same as "are not allowed to" and therefore should
not be taken as an reason to exclude the package from TeX Live.
Whether the package licence conflicts with the LPPL, or with the
GNU PL, or with the Constitution of Argentina, is not really
the point at issue.
Philip Taylor
--------------------------------------------------
Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.:
http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
--------------------------------------------------
Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.:
http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
--------------------------------------------------
Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.:
http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex
