Subject: Re: LaTeX2e license
From: [email-masked] (Daniel Quinlan)
To: Rickard Faith <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 6 May 95 00:18 PDT

Rickard Faith <[email-masked]> writes:

> Are you concerned because authors are putting LaTeX2e sources in their
> books, or because people who buy commercial distributions might not
> have LaTeX2e sources on their systems?

Not for the former reason, but for the latter (and more).

> Has anyone contacted the LaTeX3 folks?  Perhaps they can clarify what
> they mean by taking money for the distribution, and perhaps they are
> willing to write this clarification into their next release?  E.g.,
> perhaps they think that bundling LaTeX2e with a (TeX) distribution is
> acceptable, and want only to prohibit selling LaTeX2e as an add-on
> package (e.g., the way things like AMSTeX and PiCTeX are currently
> sold in the ads in TUGboat).

I mailed them earlier today asking for clarification and possibly a
modification or two.

> As for the prohibitions on modifying LaTeX2e, I don't see why LaTeX2e needs
> to be modified.  You can still load up the Sauter fonts or use a different
> hyphenation table, since these are add-ons, not modifications.  What sort
> of modifications do you want to do?

Part of the beauty of free software is that you always have the power to
fix something yourself, if it comes down to that.  LaTeX2e removes that
option.

An analogy goes like this: would you write Linux documentation in Word
for Windows?  Of course not.  No, I don't expect the LDP to immediately
rip any LaTeX2e-specific formatting code out, but *I* would be concerned
if I had written anything using LaTeX2e.  The current license is only
one or two steps removed from preventing any commercial use at all.
(It's happened before.)

Dan

--
Daniel Quinlan            Member of the League for Programming Freedom
[email-masked]