[tex-live] texlive license

Tom "spot" Callaway tcallawa at redhat.com
Tue Aug 14 19:13:52 CEST 2007


On Tue, 2007-08-14 at 09:46 -0400, Matthew D Truch wrote:

> There are three.  I was starting with the texlive-texmf package (which
> is needed before one can build the texlive package).  
> 
> http://people.redhat.com/jnovy/files/texlive/SRPMS/

I did a license audit on the texlive-texmf package this morning (derived
from texlive.texmf-2007.tar.bz2, texlive.texmf-var-2007.zip), in the
attempt to properly tag the package licenses (Distributable is _NOT_ a
valid license in Fedora).

I've CC'd several folks, including an upstream contact (hopefully, a
valid email).

Here's what I found:

The majority of the files are under one of the following licenses:
LaTex Project Public License (LPPL)
GNU Public License v2 (GPLv2)
GNU Public License v2 or later (GPLv2+)
Public Domain

(a lot of files are under the "GUST Font License", which is just the
LPPL.)

There are some files under different licenses:

Acceptable for Fedora
=====================
texmf-dist/doc/metapost/base/source/mpman.tex (MIT)
texmf-dist/tex/latex/vntex/varioref-vi.sty (LGPLv2+)
texmf-dist/doc/generic/vntex/source/vn-fonts.tex (Utopia)
texmf-dist/doc/generic/enctex/unimap.diff (UCD)
texmf-dist/doc/latex/fancyvrb/* (Artistic 2.0)

Not Acceptable for Fedora
=========================
I found several items which were licensed with non-free licenses. This
seems to conflict with the TexLive policies
(http://www.tug.org/texlive/copying.html), so I can only assume they're
included accidentally.

Literat License:

There are several files under a "literat" license, this license does not
permit any modification of the fonts, so it is non-free and accordingly,
not acceptable for Fedora. The files under this license are:

texmf-dist/doc/fonts/literat/
texmf-dist/fonts/type1/paragrap/literat/
texmf-dist/fonts/map/dvips/literat/
texmf-dist/fonts/vf/paragrap/literat/
texmf-dist/fonts/afm/paragrap/literat/
texmf-dist/fonts/tfm/paragrap/literat/
texmf-dist/tex/latex/literat/
texmf-doc/doc/german/latex-tipps-und-tricks/literat.sty (not under the
license, but probably irrelevant without the literat bits)

Aladdin Free Public License:

The Aladdin Free Public License is non-free, thus, not acceptable for
Fedora. The following files are under the AFPL:

texmf-dist/fonts/afm/public/qfonts/qhvcb.afm
texmf-dist/fonts/afm/public/qfonts/qhvcri.afm
texmf-dist/fonts/afm/public/qfonts/qhvcbi.afm
texmf-dist/fonts/afm/public/qfonts/qhvcr.afm
texmf-dist/fonts/afm/urw/bookman/ubkri8a.afm
texmf-dist/fonts/afm/urw/bookman/ubkr8a.afm
texmf-dist/fonts/afm/urw/bookman/ubkb8a.afm
texmf-dist/fonts/afm/urw/bookman/ubkbi8a.afm
texmf-dist/fonts/afm/urw/helvetic/uhvri8an.afm
texmf-dist/fonts/afm/urw/helvetic/uhvri8a.afm
texmf-dist/fonts/afm/urw/helvetic/uhvbi8a.afm
texmf-dist/fonts/afm/urw/helvetic/uhvr8an.afm
texmf-dist/fonts/afm/urw/helvetic/uhvb8an.afm

LPPL with commercial use restriction:

There is one file which has an additional restriction to the LPPL,
forbidding commercial use without explicit permission from the author.
This almost certainly renders the file non-free, and it is not ok for
Fedora.

texmf-dist/tex/latex/tools/multicol.sty

Artistic (original):

The original Artistic license is non-free, and thus, not ok for Fedora.
These files are under the Artistic license:

texmf-dist/tex/latex/fancybox/fancybox.sty
texmf-dist/tex/latex/amscls/pcatcode.sty

If they could be relicensed (either dual licensed with something
acceptable, or to something like Artistic 2.0), they'd be fine.

=== Fedora specific notes ===

If all of those files under bad licenses are removed, then the
appropriate Fedora licensing tag would be:

License: Artistic 2.0 and GPLv2 and GPLv2+ and LGPLv2+ and LPPL and MIT
and Public Domain and UCD and Utopia

As is, this package is not ok for Fedora. I've put an FE-Legal block on
the review ticket, please let me know when you have a cleaned SRPM (you
don't need a sanitized tarball, just don't package the "bad" items in
the buildroot, and nuke them during %setup if possible)

My brain hurts now. I'm going to curl up into a ball and rock gently for
a while.

~spot



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