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Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 11 Jul 2002 17:57:25 +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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I forward here a reply to Marcel's post from David Carlisle, who for some
reason got rejected by the listserv

frank


---------------------------------------------


> Choose a license that people will recognize (such as the GPL)

That simplifies things for some people (linux distributors, mainly)
but causes massive problems for others.

It is quite likely that some uses of latex by commercial organisations
would be in contravention of GPL. Whether or not you view such uses as
"good" the fact is that it is hardly reasonable to pull the plug on
activities that have been legal (and actively supported) for the last 17
years or so.

If you replace "GPL" in your statement by any other licence you have
similar problems.

LPPL was crafted to allow all the reasonable things that people were
currently doing with latex and to be consistent with the spirit of the
distribution conditions on the tex fonts. It's hard to see how anyone
who could use a GPL'ed latex but not an LPPL'ed one could use the
computer modern fonts. If they can't use the tex fonts (or metrics) they
probably have trouble building a default latex whatever the licence.

As Frank has commented, there is room for altering the text and having a
new version of the LPPL to address any concerns that are raised, but
just taking GPL or BSD or Mozilla licence off the shelf isn't an option.
It's something that you can consider doing when starting a new project
but not on a code base with almost two decades of history behind it.

David

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