[tex-live] tlmgr query

[Robin Fairbairns]

Victor Ivrii <vivrii at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 7:34 PM,  <cfrees at imapmail.org> wrote:
> > On Mon 13th Oct, 2008 at 01:28, Norbert Preining seems to have written:
> 
> It looks like mail client-agnostic :-)
> >
> >> Indeed, about 4 or 5 which have been removed in the last weeks due to
> 
> > answers
> > futhark
> > grnumalt
> > guitbeamer
> > newalg
> > newthm
> > niceframe
> > numline
> > oca
> > schedule
> >
> > - cfr
> 
> except guitbeamer all seem to be to excessive creativity in the licensing

there _are_ people in the tex world who will complain about distribution
of things for which the licence offers no permission.  (we had a
complaint about charging for the first ever tex live back in the 90s,
even -- there are people who watch these things.)

in general terms, things for which we don't know the licence terms
shouldn't be in tex live.  as it stands, i am currently scanning the
whole of the catalogue, checking all entries containing "licence
unknown", and checking whether this is indeed true.  when i notice one
that declares the package is not debian free, i notify this list.  in
some cases, the licence is explicitly saying that the package should not
be sold (tex live discs get sold), in others it's merely saying the
package doesn't meet the debian guidelines.  either way, the package
gets removed from tex live.

these things may seem to you like excessive creativity in the licensing;
to me they're no more than laziness on the part of the authors, who
simply can't be bothered to write a clear statement of licence
conditions.

lazy authors cause trouble, and often end up with their package removed
from tex live.  poncy complaints, suggesting i'm wasting my time, simply
make me cross.

robin