On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 12:12:06PM -0500, Yaakov Selkowitz wrote:
> MMIX is the successor to Donald Knuth's MIX machine in later editions of The
> Art of Computer Programming. The canonical software implementation is made
> available with the following license:
>
> http://mmix.cs.hm.edu/websvn/wsvn/MMIX/mmixware/trunk/boilerplate.w
>
> While the wording is different from the same author's license on TeX
> (approved as the "Knuth license"), the intent appears to be the same.
>
> Is this acceptable for Fedora, and what name should be used?
The interesting part is this: "Changes are permissible only if the
modified file is given a new name, different from the names of
existing files in the {\ninett MMIX}ware package, and only if the
modified file is clearly identified as not being part of that package."
This is reminiscent of a feature of the LaTeX Project Public License
1.2 of which the FSF said:
This license contains complex and annoying restrictions on how to
publish a modified version, including one requirement that falls
just barely on the good side of the line of what is acceptable: that
any modified file must have a new name.
The reason this requirement is acceptable for LaTeX is that TeX has
a facility to allow you to map file names, to specify “use file bar
when file foo is requested”. With this facility, the requirement is
merely annoying; without the facility, the same requirement would be
a serious obstacle, and we would have to conclude it makes the
program nonfree.
I assume in this context there is nothing corresponding to the
filename mapping facility.
Richard
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