[tex-live] latex, babel, greek

Roozbeh Pournader roozbeh@sharif.edu
Sun, 6 Oct 2002 22:09:00 +0330 (IRT)


Well, I just checked things, and as far as I can tell, there is no mention
in the CTAN's LaTeX base package that babel must be included with LaTeX,
and even it is mentioned specifically in 'legal.txt' that:

   The use of LaTeX is unrestricted.

So there is no need to remove LaTeX entirely, and that brings us back to
babel, simplifying the problem a lot. These are the options I can think
of:

   1. Apostolos agrees to change the license.
   2. Johannes agrees to remove greek from babel.
   3. We remove babel from TeX Live.

There may or may not be other options of:

   4. We replace the greek files with files giving warning messages about
      the licensing problem, and a pointer to where one can download them.
      We probably won't be breaking LPPL since the files will not be a
      derivative work or a modified file. It will be a new file, done from
      scratch. (I'm not sure if this is legal, since babel may be
      considered a whole Program in LPPL terms, and it even contains a 
      manifest file.)

   5. Sebastian tells that a license like babel's greek is OK for
      TeX Live. That will render it off-topic here, and will take us to 
      teTeX, debian, or some other mailing list.

   6. We forget the thing altogether, waiting for the day some other guy 
      raises the issue.

roozbeh