Bug#477060: texlive-base: license of amslatex is unclear
Frank Küster
> I'll
> try to gather all the information about this particular package and
> forward the messages individually, as soon as I get a bug number.
Here's the first:
From: Frank Küster <fr...@kuesterei.ch>
Subject: Unclear License of AMSLaTeX
To: tech-s...@ams.org
Cc: 363...@bugs.debian.org, TeXLive <tex...@tug.org>
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 19:32:54 +0200
Dear AMSLaTeX team,
I'm a little confused with regard to the license of amslatex. On CTAN
and in the TeX Catalogue, the license information says that it is
licensed under the LPPL (LaTeX Project Public License). However,
neither on amslatex' homepage, http://www.ams.org/tex/amslatex.html, nor
in the files on CTAN is a hint that this is actually true.
On the contrary, one of the files in the amsrefs subdirectory,
pcatcode.dtx, says that it's licensed under the Artistic license (which
is pretty unspecific, there are many versions around), and most other
files contain a statement like this:
%%% copyright = "Copyright 1995 American Mathematical Society,
%%% all rights reserved. Copying of this file is
%%% authorized only if either:
%%% (1) you make absolutely no changes to your copy,
%%% including name; OR
%%% (2) if you do make changes, you first rename it
%%% to some other name.",
This is clearly not what the LPPL grants and requires, not even older
versions:
- it does not permit to distribute changed versions, even when renamed,
- the current LPPL allows to change the internal identification as an
alternative to renaming the file, and
- this text doesn't even allow to copy amsclass.dtx to amsclass.dtx.bak
I am sure this is not what was originally intended. Therefore I'd like
to kindly request that you clarify the license situation, communicate
this to distributors, and include the information in the next release.
In my opinion, the LPPL is indeed a good choice for a LaTeX extension,
and I'd be glad to see amslatex unambiguously LPPL'ed.
Anyway, many thanks for providing and maintaining this great LaTeX
extension!
Kind regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)
--
Frank Küster
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
Frank Küster
Subject: Re: [tex-live] texlive license
To: tex-...@tug.org
Cc: 363...@bugs.debian.org
Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:46:18 +0200
Barbara Beeton <b...@ams.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Aug 2007, Karl Berry wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> I asked Barbara Beeton at the AMS about taking care of the pcatcode
> madness, in hopes we can get a free version shortly. I'm sure they did
> not intend the current situation.
>
> the current situation was absolutely not
> intended. the person who now maintains
> amsrefs will change the license information
> for pcatcode to lppl, and the new version
> will be posted as soon as i've been told
> that the change has been made.
>
> the rest of amsrefs will be modified similarly,
> as will all ams-latex files, effective with
> the next regular update, expected (probably)
> sometime in 2008.
Thanks for the news. Will the 2008 update also contain clarifications
of the amslatex license itself[1], or will that not be sorted out in
time?
Thanks for your work,
Frank
[1] as we discussed earlier, the main license text has ambiguous wording
regarding modifications, and there are a couple of files under unclear
licenses.
Frank Küster
> that would make us rather unhappy as well, but
> if it happens, it can't be helped. our staff is
> just too small and too overwhelmed with production
> deadlines to be able to devote the time solely to
> getting the new release of ams-latex ready.
I understand and hope that our release team will have understanding,
too.
> our hope is that, barring disasters, the update
> of ams-latex -- all of it -- will be ready by
> the end of the calendar year. (but unfortunately,
> we must allow for disasters; this past year has
> been spent migrating book and journal production
> from vms to unix, involving retraining of the
> entire editorial and production staff.
>From what I know from vms, migrating non-geek staff who's used to the
old ways for their whole computer-aware lifetime should be quite
hard...
Happy TeXing,
Frank