[tex-live] pscyr fails the license test

[David Kastrup]

Tigran Aivazian <tigran at aivazian.fsnet.co.uk> writes:

> On Thu, 20 Oct 2005, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
>
>> Tigran Aivazian wrote:
>>
>>> Namely, all I am saying, is that these "copyright" activities
>>> (though may be loudly claimed to be obeyed officially etc etc)
>>> should be given such low priority so as not to waste time of very
>>> talented hackers who contribute to TeX Live.
>>
>> hacking is interesting; but without the social and legal context,
>> not very useful to the bigger community.
>
> Hmmm, I hope I misunderstood you somehow.  Because I can't imagine
> that I need to explain the meaning of the word "hacker" to Sebastian
> Rahtz, whose fame (as a hacker) covers the earth from one corner to
> the other corner thereof.

[...]

You did not get his point at all, not a single bit of it.  And because
you utterly did not get his point, you fantasized some completely
absurd point and then went on a lecturing tirade to dispell it again.

If hackers like Stallman had not wasted his time in, for example,
designing the GPL, or persuading MIT to release X11 under a free
license, or Linus Torvalds had not wasted his time changing the
license of Linux to GPL while this was still legally feasible, or the
university of Berkeley had not wasted its time getting the copyright
status of BSDlite cleared up and a number of other time wastes for
``"copyright" activities'', the combined work of ten thousands of
hackers would have ended up along with that of by far most software
from millions of programmers in the world: in closed drawers, in
unmaintained and forgotten toys, in the waste bin.

And yes, because maintainers of TeX Live worry about the copyright
status, I can copy and distribute and sell TeX Live reasonably free of
the fear that I will get a preliminary injunction delivered to my door
that will cause me significant costs and stop any business I might
have tried doing dead in its tracks.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum