[tex-live] License auditing: Consequences

[Robin Fairbairns]

Frank Kuester wrote (in reply to me):

> > but surely, if texlive is a part of debian tex strategy, confusion is
> > engendered if there's no clear split between free and nonfree, in
> > texlive?
> 
> Well, some confusion will stay anyway: Unless the FSF presents a revised
> version of the GFDL which is acceptable to the majority of Debian
> developers, GFDL-licensed documentation in texlive will be in a separate
> non-free Package in Debian, anyway.  So there's not *much* more
> confusion on the users' side if some input files are in non-free, too.
> However, I'd rather avoid this, both because I generally dislike these
> "my type of freedom, your type of freedom" discussions, and because it
> would be much more work.

the gfdl is pretty much a joke, afaics (at least one reputable-seeming
source seems to contradict its terms -- as distributed it formats with
latex into a terrible mess).  anyone who can persuade the fsf to sort
the thing out will be doing the world a good service.

> >> - saying that they are licensed under license $FOO (mostly LPPL), but at
> >>   the same time "explaining" what that means in words that never really
> >>   matched the proper meaning of $FOO,
> >
> > i mark such packages as other.
> >
> >>    or only old versions
> >
> > i tend to let such packages stand, provided they have the standard
> > rubric "or any later version, at your convenience".
> 
> I had at least one without such a rubric.  I'm not sure whether this has
> been resolved meanwhile.

probably not, but without even knowing what packages you're looking
at, it's difficult to say.

r