[tex-live] license violation in tetex-texmf-3.0 fixed

Petr Olsak petr at olsak.net
Fri May 26 12:43:44 CEST 2006


On Thu, 25 May 2006, Thomas Esser wrote:

> Petr Olsak has notified me today, that tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz contains
> three files which have been modified in a way that violates his license.
> The modification had been done by me (as I wrongly assumed that the
> license was GPL; in fact the license was "GPL with some additional
> restrictions").
>
> So, I just have updated these three files (reverted to the original
> version) and replaced the "broken" tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz by the fixed
> tetex-texmf-3.0po.tar.gz

Thank you very much.

> This update just fixes the copyright violation. I cannot recommend to
> download this "update". The version of cstex / cslatex contained in
> teTeX-3.0 (both tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz and tetex-texmf-3.0po.tar.gz)
> is severely broken (e.g. pdfcslatex produces dvi by default).

Thomas Esser had five possibilities how to react to the reported licence
problem.

1. do nothing: that would mean that the licence violation would not be
corrected.

2. to remove the whole tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz from CTAN: that would mean
that the license violation would be corrected but teTeX 3.0 would not be
usable never more.

3. to remove the relevant files (csplain.ini etc.) from the
tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz archive: that would mean that the license violation
would be corrected but csplain/cslatex stuff would no longer be usable in
teTeX 3.0.

4. to replace the relevant files by old version (Feb. 2000): that would
mean that the license violation would be corrected but
pdfcsplain/pdfcslatex would not work properly.

5. to replace relevant files by newer version (Feb 2005): that would mean
that the license violation would be corrected and all cstex stuff would
work properly in teTeX 3.0 environment.

We have had to send five emails to Thomas until he decided to do
something else than 1. He decided on 4. Of course, we would be more
happy if he decided to do 5 (it would be no extra work for him!), but
given our current relationship, that would be too much to expect.

> There is no current maintainer, since teTeX is declared dead (at least
> at the moment until someone picks it up).

This "dead teTeX" lives happily in many Linux distributions as the current
and latest TeX software. Unfortunately, throught this "dead teTeX", a
patch that violates csplain author's copyright got into hundreds of Linux
(and other Unix) distributions. This was the main reason why I asked for
the problem to be corrected.

> Since I am not really maintaining teTeX any more,
> I am not going to fix your bug in teTeX.

This is not _my bug_ in teTeX, this bug is a consequence of our bad
communication (i.e. communnication between T.E. and P.O.). I will try to
show here what I mean by a better communication:

* T.E. (March 2004): Petr, we plan to use only one TeX engine (pdfetex)
  for all formats. What should we do in CSTeX?
* P.O. (March 2004): discussion about the best macrocode to fix this on
  cstex@ list.
* P.O. (April 2004): Thomas, I am sending you a new version of CSTeX files
  which solves the problem of shared TeX engine for different formats.

Of course, the main teTeX developer is not obliged to inform his
co-workers about his plans. Here is what really happened:

* Bug report from a user to P.O. (Feb. 2005): pdfcsplain does not work
  in new teTeX distribution.
* P.O. (Feb. 2005): Oh my, there is shared TeX engine (pdfetex) for
  different formats. I didn't know about it. Discussion about the
  best macrocode to fix this on cstex@ list.
* P.O. to T.E.: (March 3 2005): Thomas, I am sending a new version of
  CSTeX files which solves the problem of shared TeX engine for different
  formats.

What went on at this point? I believe that the ideal communication betwen
co-workers would follow like this:

* T.E. to P.O. (Mar. 2005): thanks for new wersion, but I released
  teTeX tree tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz one month ago. There is old
  version of CSTeX here. I don't plan to do any changes in file
  tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz and this file will be for many months the
  official source of TeX software for hudreds of Linux distributions.
* P.O. to T.E. (Mar. 2005): please, upgrade CSTeX files not only in the
  development tree but also in tetex-texmf-3.0.tar.gz. The old version
  of CSTeX does not work in the environment with shared TeX engine
  (problems with pdfcsplain/pdfcslatex).
* T.E. to P.O. (Mar. 2005): done, tetex-texmf-3.0a.tar.gz is released.
* P.O. to T.E. (Mar. 2005): Thank you.

Unfortunately, this communication has never happened. What happened was
this: P.O. was never informed that the source for Linux distributions was
not upgraded with CSTeX files from March 3 2005. The end users of CSTeX
from Linux distributions are out of luck, because due to communication
problems between P.O. and T.E. the software they need does not work.

Best Regards

Petr Olsak




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