[Gnewsense-dev] Re: [gNewSense-users] unclear licence of AMSLatex (fwd)

[Sam Geeraerts]

Benedikt Ahrens schreef:
> Completely right, you would have to modify the source code of each single 
> document.
> You can compare it to C header files, I think. 
>
> For the soft links I don't know. The license doesn't say that another file may not have the same name as this file. 
> Anyway, this would not be a very easy-to-use solution.

For most distros soft links can be provided by the package, so the user 
wouldn't even notice the change. But this could be a problem for file 
systems/platforms that don't support soft links properly (like FAT, IIRC).

Anyway, I think AMS would consider soft links to be not in the spirit of 
the license. It's best to clear that up with them to avoid any discussion.

> Let's see the critical part again (excerpt from the license proposal):
> "Modifications, and distribution of modified versions, are permitted, but only if 
> the resulting file is renamed."
>
> In my opinion, telling the user how he should name the modified file on his 
> machine is way too restictive. Perhaps we could have it changed to:
> "Modifications, and distribution of modified versions, are permitted. Modified files 
> must be distributed with a file name that is different from that of the original file 
> distributed by the AMS"
> (sorry, this is bad english)

Yes, that seems more correct. Better yet: "... Distributed modified 
files must have a file name that is different ...". You don't want to 
give the impression that modified files must be distributed. ;)

("Modification, and" still makes me feel a bit uneasy, but that's not 
the issue here.)

> This assures that only the AMS files are distributed as being from AMS and 
> would also answer Karl's question about derivations of derivations.

If soft linking is not an option and we ignore inertia for a moment, 
then it seems likely that there will be a parallel This-Is-Not-AMS-LaTeX 
version of the package that will be used by all distros, because (or 
just in case) they need to be able to make changes to the original version.

But we probably can't ignore inertia, because people can't and won't 
change all their sources overnight. So in theory everybody (distros) 
would be free to fix a bug and distribute the changed version, but in 
practice that is not an option because of compatibility issues. I'm not 
sure what to think about this.

By the way, do you mind if we move this to -dev?