[tex-live] newalg

[Robin Fairbairns]

Manuel Pégourié-Gonnard <mpg at elzevir.fr> wrote:

> Robin Fairbairns a écrit :
> >> Looks like another case of old docstrip defaults :(.

(actually, that was karl)

> It is.
> 
> > there is no licence information on ctan (i though clea had found
> > something, but i can see no sign of those things).
> 
> No explicit free licence statement means it's non-free in most
> countries, anyway, so the "noinfo" tag from the catalogue is a non-free
> category, right? So the question is whether it's non-free as
> "other-nonfree" or as "noinfo"?
> 
> I think it's rather noinfo than other-nonfree indeed. Dosctrip default
> headers cannot be regarded as a valid licence statement IMO. By the way,
> if I didn't know you have already more than enough work, I would suggest
> creating a "docstrip" tag for licence. Or anyway, I'd like to collect
> (alone or with other's help) a list of packages with this problem and
> present it to the LaTeX team once the list of verified problems gets big
> enough.
> 
> Licence information in docstrip automatic headers is just plain
> non-sense, cannot have any legal validity, and costs valuable
> developer's time in futile investigations. I feel the LaTeX team
> underestimates the problem, maybe they could change their mind if
> presented with a reasonably big list of packages with this problem.

current docstrip doesn't do this; if it puts anything "extra" in the
stripped file, it's what has been supplied (as \preamble ...
\endpreamble) in the .ins file.  thus, fulminations against the latex
team aren't actually appropriate here (unless you're complaining that
they made a mistake a while back, even though they've now corrected it).

[using third person here, since all this predates my time in the latex
project -- i joined in 1999.]

> (Well, I'm really tempted to change my local copy of docstrip.tex (the
> licence allows this) so that it says "this file, as well as its source
> \filename.dtx and the compiled documentation, can be freely used,
> distributed and/or modified under the terms of the LPPL v1.3 or higher":
> then a lot of packages would "become" free when processed for TL, which
> clearly shows how the whole thing is non-sense.)

sure.  put it where current docstrip invents a preamble when the author
hasn't supplied one.

ha ha.

r