[l2h] Maintenance of latex2html

[Roland Stigge]

Hi Ross,

thanks for your detailed mail.

On Thu, 2003-10-16 at 04:12, Ross Moore wrote:
[The latex2html license, main part:]
> Use and copying of this software and the preparation of derivative
> works based on this software are permitted, so long as the following
> conditions are met:
> 
> A  The copyright notice and this entire notice are included intact
>    and prominently carried on all copies and supporting documentation.
> B  No fees or compensation are charged for use, copies, or
>    access to this software. You may charge a nominal
>    distribution fee for the physical act of transferring a
>    copy, but you may not charge for the program itself.
> C  If you modify this software, you must cause the modified
>    file(s) to carry prominent notices (a Change Log)
>    describing the changes, who made the changes, and the date
>    of those changes.
> D  Any work distributed or published that in whole or in part
>    contains or is a derivative of this software or any part
>    thereof is subject to the terms of this agreement. The
>    aggregation of another unrelated program with this software
>    or its derivative on a volume of storage or distribution
>    medium does not bring the other program under the scope
>    of these terms.

> You find objection to clause B, claiming that this violates DFSG 1.
> Yet for a distribution such as Debian, surely clause D must be read
> as well.
> To me, this has the intention of allowing the free distribution of
> LaTeX2HTML within an "aggregation" of other software programs, as
> required by DFSG 1.
> [...]

Thanks for pointing out clause D. But consider the following.

Imagine the extreme (yet possible) case of a distribution including just
packages all of which have a license like latex2html (currently). The
DFSG require the possibility of selling the aggregate software
distribution. Even with your liberal interpretation, every package
claims (D and B) that the "fee" would effectively be for the rest of the
aggregation. But there's nothing left to assign that "fee".

> To make this clearer, perhaps clause B could be extended with a similar
> statement about aggregations, as appears in D ?
> 
> Alternatively, would it be sufficient to simply remove the adjective
> `nominal' ?

Unfortunately, both these suggestions won't meet our requirements, IMHO.
I suggest removing clause B as a whole. We (Debian) would have a problem
with _both_ of the included sentences.

Instead, I suggest the complete removal of clause B. That would be the
final move to make latex2html DFSG-compliant.

Alternatively, consider the adoption of an OSI-approved license as
suggested by Michael Chapman (and me, previously).

> DFSG 3 states:
> [...]
> DFSG 4 states:
> [...]

These issues were resolved by the fact that the author of floatflt.ins
(Mats Dahlgren) agreed to release his file under the LPPL. They were not
related to the rest of the package (see bugs.debian.org/204684).

Feel free to change floatflt.ins in the main latex2html package
accordingly.

> For example, one of the bug-reports for LaTeX2HTML at Debian
> suggests that it would be a good idea to make the  latex2html
> module depend upon teTeX.

Well, that's one of the more stupid bug reports. I'll possibly just
close it because we won't react on it otherwise (even without your
suggestion :).

When the licensing issue is resolved (which is most important to
consider for the next Debian release), I'll come back with an assorted
list of bugs where I depend on your help. You are definitely not
responsible for all the bugs listed at Debian.

> > It being at least _possible_ to charge $200 is exactly what Debian
> > requires from Free Software. Besides the GPL, please consider the LPPL
> > or any other free license approved at
> > http://www.opensource.org/licenses/.
> 
> I believe it is possible to do this, with an aggregation of software
> packages, which is all that Debian requires, right ?

See above.

Thanks for your involvement.

bye,
  Roland
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