[tex-live] verbatimcopy package missing

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:32:52 -0500 schrieb Karl Berry:

>     But TeXLive not only wants free software but open source software. 
> 
> You are using these terms in a way that does not make sense to me.
> When I say "free software", I mean free as in freedom, not free as in
> price.  As for "open source", I don't like or use the term.

I mean "free" as free to handle the pdf. To copy it, to put it on CD, to
offer it for download and -- for users -- to view, to print and also
(there could be cases where this is not possible) to search and copy
text of the pdf.

With "open source" I only meant that TL wants the source of the pdf what
probably means the knowledge how the pdf was created and the means to
recreate it locally.

(But I don't know to which extend sources are needed as nowadays a lot
of documentations includes external objects like graphics. Are the
source of such external objects required too? E.g. if I make a diagram
with a spreadsheet program and a graphic with say tiks or pstricks in
another document and then include this diagram and the graphic in my
document and perhaps also attach a pdf to my documentation, is then the
spreadsheet, the code of the graphic and the code of the attached pdf a
required part of the source? As far as can see this is not the case,
graphics and diagrams are taken as is. But if major parts of my document
would consist of imported graphics or of attached pdf's without sources
this would probably count as cheating.)




> (These are my personal views, not those of TUG.)
> 
>     % This is the source of csquotes.pdf. This file is primarily included
>     % in the distribution for legal reasons. It will not compile as is
>     % because it depends on unpublished classes and packages.
> 
> I was not aware of this.  Or if I was, I had forgotten.
> Manuel, one of us should look into this when we have a chance.

As far as I understood Norbert he is aware of this:

"Good example: fontinstallationguide, where we ship the .pdf, and the
tex code, but you cannot generate the pdf from the tex code, but all
the text, examples etc are there.

This is the freedom we take for ourselves and here we disagree with
Debian (they would never include the resepecitve pdf). So see it as an
improvement."

I really hope that my remark doesn't lead to the removal of the doc of
csquotes from texlive ;-(.


For similar reasons as the author of csquotes I can't put sources that
compile on CTAN, my documentations use unpublished packages, personal
settings and lokal fonts. And unlike the author of csquotes I don't want
to put a source that don't compile on CTAN, partly because the sources
contain a lot of personal comments and I would have to postprocess it,
partly because I do find it a bit silly to do it "only for legal
reasons".  

I hope that you don't misunderstand me. My remarks are not meant as
complains or even as a request to change the TeXLive policy: It is
absolutelty your choice what you include and what not. I did give my
packages "for free" and for me this also include the right to distribue
only parts of the files or even to ignore it completely. 

Btw: In the case of minitoc it is miktex which doesn't package the doc
since users complained about the size (the pdf is 27 MB large and
together with the sources the package grow up to 65MB).

-- 
Ulrike Fischer