Hi Manuel!
On Mon, 10 Aug 2009 01:36:26 +0200, Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>>> particular point in time and being allowed to change it would violate the
>>> right of people to express a viewpoint and have it been heard
>> 
>> First problem is that nobody can distribute l3newsXX now because 
>> there's no license for it at all. If you want anybody to distribute 
>> l3newsXX you should at least give them permission to do this.

> I think you take it the wrong way, the first question is: do the LaTeX team want
> anybody to distribute l3newsNN.pdf? There is a problem with the current status
> only if the answer is yes. And since l3news are not on CTAN, maybe it means the
> team doesn't want it to be distributed except on the latex-project site.

Sure, that's why I started with the question about it and then put "if you 
want..." in every paragraph.

>> Second problem is that Debian folks treat any bits as software (and I 
>> agree with them) so license should be a free software license if you 
>> want Debian to distribute l3newsXX. (Note that this is just my 
>> understanding, not a statement by Debian.)

> Actually, this is not Debian-specific. TeX Live also tends to distribute only
> free content (be it software and documentation) and sometimes refuses to include
> (or removes) documentation for which the source is not available. (Though TeX
> Live's criterion for "free" are less drastic than Debian's: eg, TeX Live accepts
> documents using non-free fonts 

Is it intentional or is it just overlooked? I vaguely remember 
something like this but I don't follow TeX Live closely enough lately. 
Do you have any links about it handy? (Probably it's better to take it 
off-list as it goes more off-topic for this list.)

> while Debian insists that eveything must build
> from source on a free system, and TeX Live accepts invariant sections and the
> like in GFDL.)

AFAIU TeX Live is closer to FSF than to Debian so non-modifiable 
opinions are probably ok to TeX Live. Just guessing.

Alexander Cherepanov