[tex-live] Re: ConTeXt documentation in "commercial" products

[Hans Hagen]

Hi,

>please take my apologies for bringing this up, but it seems I need to.
>According to mreadme.pdf, the documentation is under a different license
>than the code, with a "currently" attached to that statement.
>Unfortunately, the license chosen for the documentation does not allow
>inclusion in TeXLive (and Debian, hence the other Cc).
>  
>
I will add the following sentence to the readme:

If you distribute \CONTEXT\ and related software on electronic media
as part of \TEX\ distributions, you may also distribute the manuals
in electronic form, preferable as provided by the maintainers of
\CONTEXT.

Btw, context documentation is part of the tex collection but not of tex 
live; the reason is that tex live only ships documentation for which a 
source is avaliable (and since there is never the guarantee that a 
source is complete, will run, has all graphic and font resources with 
it, it means that this criterium is hard to meet, i.e. what is a source: 
if i generate an html page from an xml file, it has no source either). 
Technically this means that a pdf file like mreadme.pdf will not be 
distributed. Afaik substantial context documentation and samples (over 
100 meg in pdf form) are no part of linux distributions either. But i 
have absoutely no problems if the manuals are distributed (as long as it 
does not cost me time).

Currently, context manuals are put (stepwise) under svn, and for 
practical purposes it's done on one of our internal machines with a copy 
on taco's website. However, there is no guarantee that each document 
runs as intended (i.e. there are fall backs when i use for instance non 
public fonts, or non public graphics, and i don't provide support for 
that).

At some time I may put a zip archive with the manuals alongside the 
other context zips, but i wonder is there is any interest in those tens 
of megabytes.

BTW, concerning GPL and manuals ... manuals are no programs and i like 
the simple and understandable CC ones; this is also the reason why i use 
the CC GPL variant, because then users (and i) don't have to read and 
understand those tens of pages of legal stuff -)

Hans 


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