[tex-live] Broken dependencies among sty files in TeX Live 2009 distribution

[Alexander Cherepanov]

Hi Karl!
On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:27:02 -0500, karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry) wrote:

>     How a package with noinfo
>
> Instead of just debating it, how about helping with writing the authors?
> That's what's needed to move forward.

That's different things. IMHO, first step should be to make sure that
all packages are free, say, by removing the packages in question.
Distros like Debian and Red Hat will remove them anyway.
And only then the situation could be improved further by encouraging
the authors to choose a free license for their packages. And this 
could be done for non-free packages too.

But let's put freeness aside for a minute. One needs a license just 
for distribution. As I see it, no license -- no permission to 
distribute. And texlive is not just distributed, it is sold. As you
know very well ctan have enough packages with nosell license, so I
don't see how one can assume that a random tex package could be sold.

BTW copyright infringement is more and more becoming a crime and can 
be prosecuted even against author's will.

But to move forward a tiny bit here is the list of texlive packages 
with 'noinfo' license (82 items):

<texlive>        <ctan>           <authors>
acmtrans         acmtrans         ACM
adrlist          adrlist          Tobias Spribille
apl              apl              Aarno Hohti, Okko Kanerva
asciichart       ascii-chart      Victor Eijkhout
autotab          autotab          Gabriele Kruljac
bengali          bengali-pandey   Anshuman Pandey
borceux          borceux          Fran&#xE7;ois Borceux
cchess           cchess           Jacques Richer, Frank Mittelbach
cherokee         cherokee         Alan Stanier
citeref          citeref          Bj&#xF6;rn Briel
cjw              cjw              Colin J. Wynne
cmcyralt         cmcyralt-ltx     Alexander Harin, Vadim V. Zhytnikov
codepage         codepage         Alain Aubord
context-mathsets context-mathsets auth:mahajan
croatian         croatian         Darko &#x17D;ubrini&#x107;
cursor           cursor           auth:spit
dialogl          dialogl          Michael J. Downes
duerer           duerer           Alan Hoenig
dvidvi           dvidvi           Radical Eye Software
dviout.win32     dviout           Oshima Toshio
eiad             eiad             Ivan A Derzhanski
eqname           eqname           Gerd Neugebauer
esdiff           esdiff           Eddie Saudrais, Christophe Jorssen
figflow          figflow          Ian Hutchinson
firststeps       firststeps-xampl George Gr&#xE4;tzer
formlett         formlett         Zhuhan Jiang
fullpict         fullpict         Bruce Shawyer
gb4e             gb4e             Hans-Peter Kolb, Craig Thiersch
germbib          germbib          Harald Harders
hyphen-croatian  hrhyph           Marinovi&#x107; Igor
hyphen-turkish   tkhyph           Pierre A. MacKay
jhep             jhep             Fabrizio Nesti
lacheck          lacheck          Kresten Krab Thorup, Per Abrahamsen
levy             levy-font        Princeton University
lgreek           lgreek           Timothy Murphy
logic            logic            Rick Simpson
ltablex          ltablex          QNX Software Systems Ltd.
maple            maple            Waterloo Maple Software
math-into-latex  mil              Birkh&#xE4;user Boston
mff              mff              Alexander Berdnikov, auth:turtia
mp3d             threed           Denis B. Roegel
multenum         multenum         Dennis Kletzing
musictex         musictex         Daniel Taupin
mxd              mxd              Oliver Corff
mxedruli         mxedruli         Johannes Heinecke
nature           nature           Peter Czoschke
nkarta           nkarta           Daniel H. Luecking
omega-devanagari devanagari-omega auth:unknown
osmanian         osmanian         Alan Stanier
phonetic         phonetic         Emma Pease
physe            physe            Peter Breitenlohner
phyzzx           phyzzx           auth:kaplunovsky
pictex           pictex           Michael Wichura
plain-doc        csname-doc       auth:unknown
ps2pkm           ps2pk            Piet Tutelaers
relenc           relenc           Lars Hellstr&#xF6;m
script           script           Frank Neukam, Roland Lichti
sfheaders        sfheaders        Maurizio Loreti
shadbox          shadbox          Dmitry A. Glazkov
shade            shade            Peter Schmitt
showdim          showdim          Michael J. Downes
simpsons         simpsons         Raymond Chen
slashbox         slashbox         auth:yasuoka, auth:sato
soyombo          soyombo          Oliver Corff
sprite           sprite           Martin Costabel
termcal          termcal          Bill Mitchell
timesnew         ibm              Sebastian Rahtz
timing           timing           Ludwig May, auth:leilich
tracking         tracking         Dmitry A. Glazkov
tree-dvips       tree-dvips       Emma Pease
typespec         typespec         Stephen Moye
uhrzeit          uhrzeit          Olaf Meltzer
ulsy             ulsy             Ulrich Goldschmitt
undertilde       undertilde       Benjamin Bayart
vector           vector           Nick Efford
vertex           vertex           Hal Varian
vrb              vrb              Kees van der Laan
wadalab          wadalab          Werner Lemberg
xtcapts          xtcapts          Olaf Fricke
yannisgr         yannisgr         Yannis Haralambous, auth:thull
ytex             ytex             Daniel C. Brotsky
zefonts          zefonts          Robert Fuster, Constantin Kahn

Maybe someone will see familiar packages or authors.

Authors are taken from copyright/@owner value in the catalogue where 
there is one, or from authorref/@id otherwise. The latter are resolved 
against authors file from 2006 version of the catalogue, thus not all 
author ids are resolved. And sorry for the artifacts of xml processing 
of non-English names.

Alexander Cherepanov