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Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
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Sun, 21 Jul 2002 21:13:10 +0200
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Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
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Frank Mittelbach <[log in to unmask]>
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Thomas Bushnell, BSG writes:
 > Frank Mittelbach <[log in to unmask]> writes:
 >
 > > i think so yes, for example, Don's home page
 > > other may be able to refer you to more explicit quotes.
 >
 > Knuth's home page is large.  Do you have a specific reference?

sorry, seems i have thrown you a red herring myself. His intentions seem to be
only briefly touched at on his home page (the reference to TeX gets absolutely
frozen upon his death is there but not much more)

i took the effort (though i think this is a different discussion therefore
finally changed the subject) to try and pin down some references. best i was
able to do is


@Article{Knuth:TB11-4-489,
  author =       "Donald E. Knuth",
  title =        "{The future of {\TeX} and {\MF}}",
  journal =      j-TUGboat,
  volume =       "11",
  number =       "4",
  pages =        "489--489",
  month =        nov,
  year =         "1990",
  ISSN =         "0896-3207",
  bibdate =      "Wed Jul 18 18:33:43 MDT 2001",
  bibsource =    "ftp://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/tugboat.bib;
                 http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/index-table-t.html#tugboat",
  acknowledgement = ack-bnb # " and " # ack-nhfb,
}

in there he say (beside other things):

As stated on the copyright pages of Volumes B, D, and E, anybody can make use
of my programs in whatever way they wish as  long as they do not use the names
TeX, METAFONT, or Computer Modern.

The copyright page of volume B then says:

 The progam for TeX is in the public domain and readers may freely incorporate
 the algorithms of this book into their own programs. However, the use of the
 name TeX is restricted to software systems that agree exactly with the program
 presented here.

that seems to me more than trip test complience.

while I'm at it, the copyright page for volume E is similar and states that
any font named cmr10 (and so on) has to be fully compatible with the one
produced from the programs in the book.

Now i'm not saything this is legally inforcable the way he said it (i have no
idea), for TeX there is a trademark, though for Computer Modern there is
probably none (definitely not for the 72 individual font names. Nevertheless
Debian wouldn't get a good press if it would generate modified versions of
such programs and fonts and distributed them under the original names.


frank

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