[tex-live] [UKTUG-Committee] Fw: Strange license of ukhyphen

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Jay, hi UK-TUG committee!

On Don, 25 Mai 2006, Jay Hammond wrote:
> Norbert, it may be clear to you that the UKHyphen licence is in 
> breach of the FSF/Debian guidelines. I have not read either licence 

No it is not *clear* to me. I said that I suspect that it is not
consistent with FSF nor DFSG. The reason is the following: How would one
give a general description of what is to be considered free:
* rename clause 			ok
* rename clause with list of 10 additional names	maybe???
* rename clause with "similar names"		what means similar?
* rename clause with arbitrary additional names		probably not

THis is MY WILD GUESS! I am *not* debian-legal, and much less FSF-legal,
nor are you ;-)

> I hope that with some flexibility on all sides, when we can trace the 
> originators, we may be able to relicence the files, and still retain 
> the essential requirements of the originators.

As far as I understood from Karls answer 
http://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2006-May/010233.html
the option of relicensing is not present.

> This hyphens file is not much different to TeX,  in terms of licence. 

True.

> It allows derived works only under a new name.   I think there has 

But it is the *ONLY* instance that adds a list of additional names:

Let's put it simple and clear:

If this would be the standard, we wouldn't have:
	etex
	pdfetex
	NOT EVEN latex
as all of them have tex as a part of it!!!

> DEK has used his common sense when asked for interpretation and 
> relaxation of the conditions of the TeX  licence.  He's allowed some 
> changes to the source code (reflected in the version numbers) and 
> encourages forks (such as eTeX) to exist with new names. 

See above, the ukhyphen states that the file name *must not* match eg
ukhyph. Matching is not defined, so it could be interpreted as "being a
part of". With this interpretation and a similar addionion by DEK we
wouldn't have etex, nor latex.

Do we want this? Is this the intention?

And the other question: What should be prevented by this additonal name:
All TeX distribution include in their language.dat file ukhyphen.tex, so
a renaming to ukhyph.tex will not include it into a format. So the fear
for problematic format incompatibilities is not valid.

And I don't see any other reason.

Last but not least I have to agree with Sebastian Rathz 
http://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2006-May/010238.html
that the source of these files are originale OUP, as also stated in
the file, so applying a license from the UK-TUG seems to be a strong move.

Best wishes

Norbert

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Dr. Norbert Preining <preining AT logic DOT at>             Università di Siena
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