[tex-live] licences

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Mon Oct 5 03:31:15 CEST 2009


On 5 October 2009 Dr. Clea F. Rees wrote:

 > CTAN describes pdfcprot as LPPL, any version, but the terms described
 > in the Readme don't support this as far as I can tell.

The copyright note is in the dtx file:

% This file can be redistributed and/or modified under the terms
% of the LaTeX Project Public License Version 1.2 or later distributed 
% together with this file. See LEGAL.TXT

The file LEGAL.txt (containing the LPPL) is in the same directory on
CTAN.

Does the text in README.txt violate LPPL?  It sais: "Redistribution of
this bundle is allowed provided that all files that make up the
pdfcprot bundle are contained."

This is in accordance with LPPL: "You may distribute a complete,
unmodified copy of the Work as you received it."

I assume that the author definitely wants to have the files under
LPPL.  However, it's never a good idea to describe the content of a
particular standard license with ones own words.  This is always more
confusing than helpful.

In this particular case the author provides a list of files in
README.txt which can be excluded from a distribution.  But I think
that if all files are distributed, the package is under LPPL and the
README can be ignored.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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