CTAN are adopting Debian's definition of free software! (Follow the links in this article, which was <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> in comp.text.tex yesterday)
Jules (Any replies for me to read, Cc: I haven't (yet) resubscribed to -devel) Robin Fairbairns wrote: > > The CTAN team have been concerned, for some time, about the copyright > status of the material held on the CTAN archives. In the course of > preparation of the latest TeX Live disc, Sebastian Rahtz compiled a > list of the licence status of many available packages, and it is the > CTAN team's intention to extend that list to as full coverage of the > archive holdings as is possible. > > In parallel with this work, we have instituted a new hierarchy on > CTAN, called nonfree/; it is our intention to move all items, for > which there are significant distribution restrictions, to that > hierarchy. > > STRUCTURE > > The nonfree hierarchy mimics the structure of the main part of CTAN; > there are (or may in the future be) sub-hierarchies nonfree/biblio, > /fonts, /graphics, /indexing, /language, /support, /systems and /web > > For each entry in the non-free hierarchy, there is a corresponding > entry in the main part of CTAN, which is a symbolic link to the > nonfree/ hierarchy. Since CTAN does not index symbolic links, the > only appearance that a non-free item makes in the FILES.* files is its > instance on the nonfree/ hierarchy. The `quote site index' command > uses FILES.byname, so that it will always tell you if the item you're > seeking is not free. > > CRITERIA > > Licensing conditions that CTAN currently recognises are listed in > > http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/licenses.html > > In the terms defined therein, the nonfree/ tree will hold items whose > licensing is unknown, nocommercial, nosell, shareware, or other. > > Notes: > > 1. CTAN cannot hold matter whose distribution is restricted, anyway: > the archive has no control over what its mirrors might do. This is > why there is no category `nodistribute'. > > 2. The `nonfree' licensing category nosource _does_ stay in the main > CTAN tree; there are usable items on CTAN whose source is not publicly > available, but which are nevertheless freely usable and distributable > by all and sundry. > > 3. We need to treat unknown licenses as nonfree, because of the legal > situation in many countries that one is obliged to assume that an > author would not wish his/her propertty to be treated as if it were in > the public domain. We have, as yet, moved nothing of category unknown > to the nonfree/ hierarchy; we will be doing that job later in the > year. > > THE FUTURE > > The CTAN team are slowly moving items to the nonfree/ hierarchy. This > process may be expected to accelerate during the course of this year; > in particular, one may expect items of category unknown to be moved > starting next month (June 1999). > > If *you* are an author who has not responded to an enquiry about the > status of your stuff on CTAN, we urge you to release a new version > which makes its licensing status clear, and to upload that version to > CTAN in the usual way (see README.uploads on any CTAN site). Don't > forget to mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- uploads don't get acted > upon without such a message. > > If you don't do this, and we don't otherwise deduce the status of your > stuff, it is liable to be moved to the nonfree/ hierarchy, and to > disappear from future CD distirbutions of TeX. > > OTHER INFORMATION > > While CTAN is _not_ enforcing an open-source policy, we recommend > sites such as > > http://www.opensource.org/osd.html > > for discussion of the issues behind software licensing. -- /----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------\ | Jelibean aka | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | 6 Evelyn Rd | | Jules aka | | Richmond, Surrey | | Julian Bean | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | TW9 2TF *UK* | +----------------+-------------------------------+---------------------+ | War doesn't demonstrate who's right... just who's left. | | When privacy is outlawed... only the outlaws have privacy. | \----------------------------------------------------------------------/