[tex-live] EC license

[Alexander Cherepanov]

Hi Manuel!
On Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:50:18 +0200, Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard <mpg at elzevir.fr> wrote:

>> Sure, maintaning sane namespace is vital. But license is a wrong tool 
>> for that. First, it doesn't work. Look, FSF says that the renaming 
>> requirement is acceptable for latex only because it's easy to overcome
>> (see http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/#LPPL-1.2 ). And, of course, 
>> a license of EC fonts doesn't have any say in naming of independently 
>> created fonts.
>> 
>> Second, many renaming clauses are overreaching. LPPL permits to take 
>> excerpts without restriction and that is great. The EC license doesn't. 
>> Symbols for the intersection of T1 and T2* encodings in LH fonts are 
>> taken from EC fonts. Restriction for names in this case doesn't look 
>> useful (LH fonts can not be used as a replacement for EC fonts), it just 
>> complicates the license situation.

> I think you're making good points here. 

Mostly echoing what I've seen on debian-legal:-)

> They'll probably even more useful in a
> mail to the author, if you'd like to write him :-)

Consider it beta version:-)

> By the way, I wonder whether it would be realistic to put up some standard
> argumentation about why (strong) naming clauses are often undesirable, that one
> could point authors to 

IMHO that's doubtful.

> (or get inspiration from) 

That's much more probable.

> when asking them to reconsider
> their initial licence choice.

One of the problems is that we don't know a priori why author have 
chosen one license or the other. Does s/he feel strongly about 
renaming clause or it's a random choice?..

> Unfortunately it is hard to start a discussion about this point without getting
> rapidly to trolls or at least overstatements...

Alexander Cherepanov