[tex-live] interactiveplot

[Heiko Oberdiek]

Hello,

On 27.11.2014 18:21, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> 
> To be more precise: PDF became an ISO standard.  In case the
> `interactiveplot' bundle relies on extensions specific to Adobe
> Reader, it should be rejected.  If it relies on the ISO standard only,
> it should be part of TeXLive.

The criteria is too week.

>From https://www.tug.org/texlive/copying.html:

| As a general statement, the TeX Live maintainers agree (at least
| for the shared purpose of working on TeX Live) with the principles
| and philosophy of the free software movement.
|
| Therefore, to the best of our knowledge, all the software in
| TeX Live meets the requirements of the Free Software Foundation's
| definition of free software, and the Debian Free Software
| Guidelines. In the rare cases of conflict, we generally follow
| the FSF.
| Furthermore, the material in TeX Live should not require
| nonfree software to be useful.

The last sentence is the issue here. The package creates
a PDF file with features, which are understood by
Acrobat Reader (see the README of the package). However,
AR is *not* free according to Debian/FSF.

The question is, do free/open PDF reader(s) exist,
which also support the features? AFAIK, just one
such a PDF reader would be enough.

The possibility, that such a feature could be
implemented by a free/open PDF reader in the
future is not enough either. Present is required,
not future. But in such a future, the package
can then be included in TeX Live.

Disclaimer:
The paragraphs above are just my interpretation of
TeX Live's conditions for its packages.
  Also I don't want to express any opinion of mine,
whether this restriction of TeX Live is good or bad.
IMHO, the decision belongs to the hard-working
developers/ maintainers of TeX Live, many of them
with a very strong background of free/open software.

Yours sincerely
  Heiko Oberdiek