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Subject:
From:
Lars Hellström <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 3 Jul 2002 10:26:28 +0200
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At 19.55 +0200 2002-07-02, Frank Mittelbach wrote:
>Lars Hellström writes:
> > Concerning the matter of stating intent, perhaps something like the
> > following could be included in the preamble?
> >
> >   The purpose of this License is to grant The User the right to
> >   freely obtain, use, and make derivative works based on The Program,
> >   whilst at the same time preserving the integrety of The Program.
[snip]
>
>just reading the whole license again (helps sometimes :-) isn't the above not
>already covered by
>
>  We, the LaTeX3 Project, believe that the conditions below give you
>  the freedom to make and distribute modified versions of The Program
>  that conform with whatever technical specifications you wish while
>  maintaining the availability, integrity, and reliability of
>  The Program.  If you do not see how to achieve your goal while
>  meeting these conditions, then read the document `cfgguide.tex'
>  in the base LaTeX distribution for suggestions.

Well, they do indeed express the same thing, but in different degrees of
precision. The existing paragraph is sort of saying "We hope this legal
document says ..." whereas the paragraph I suggested more takes the
approach "This legal document should say that ...". If one is playing the
devil's advocate (and from your remarks it seems likely that the OSI has
done this and will do so again) then it would be easy to see the existing
paragraph as completely void of any obligation and therefore ignore it,
whereas (IMHO) a paragraph starting "The purpose of this license is ..." at
least gives a declaration of in what spirit the rest of the license should
be read.

However, the following could be a sufficient improvement:

  The purpose of this License is to grant you, The User, the right to
  freely obtain, use, and make derivative works based on The Program,
  whilst at the same time preserving the integrety of The Program.
  We, the LaTeX3 Project, believe that the conditions below give you
  the freedom to make and distribute modified versions of The Program
  that conform with whatever technical specifications you wish while
  maintaining the availability, integrity, and reliability of
  The Program.  If you do not see how to achieve your goal while
  meeting these conditions, then read the document `cfgguide.tex'
  in the base LaTeX distribution for suggestions.

OTOH it now (after reading cfgguide.tex and modguide.tex) seems to me that
the reference to cfgguide above is really only useful in the case of LPPL
applied to LaTeX. Even in the case of LPPL applied to a LaTeX package, it
would make more sense to refer to modguide.tex. That document does capture
the spirit of it all, even though it could probably do with an update.

Lars Hellström

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