[tex-live] Strange license of ukhyphen

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Fri May 26 00:11:43 CEST 2006


    But Karl to be honest, this is the only file I have seen that has this
    special renaming clause, ie specifying that renaming it differently is
    not enough, several names are forbidden, too.

Only one I've ever seen too.  I was very surprised when Phil put all
those names into his final version that he sent to me, but he was not
inclined to take them out.  So ...

    Let's put it to extremes:

Sure, the extreme case is nonfree.  But the case here isn't extreme.
And Phil isn't using ambiguous phrases like "very similar", he's
explicitly listing the "forbidden" names.  Who cares?  Honestly, I don't
feel that my freedom is being seriously impinged here.  I can take
ukhyphen.tex, I can modify it, I can redistribute my modified version.
That seems like the *fundamental* thing to me.  Not that I need to be
able to choose any name in the world that I want for my modified
version.

(Although I think licenses without naming restrictions are vastly
preferred.)

Based on rms' reasoning for the old latex license, I continue to believe
that the ukhyphen license would be ok for FSF.  And I don't want to
take up his time asking about it, either.

karl


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