$Id: LICENSE.TL 1636 2006-06-01 15:46:42Z karl $ COPYING CONDITIONS FOR TeX Live: To the best of our knowledge, all software in the TeX Live distribution is freely redistributable (libre, that is, not necessarily gratis), within the Free Software Foundation's definition and the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Where the two conflict, we generally follow the FSF (see [*] below). If you find any non-free files included, please contact us (references given at the end). That said, TeX Live has neither a single copyright holder nor a single license covering its entire contents, since it is a collection of many disparate packages. Therefore, you may copy, modify, and/or redistribute software from TeX Live only if you comply with the requirements placed thereon by the owners of the respective packages. To most easily learn these requirements, we suggest checking the TeX Catalogue at: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/ (or any CTAN mirror). The Catalogue is also included in TeX Live in ./texmf/doc/html/catalogue/, but the online version will have updates. Of course the legal statements within the packages themselves are the final authority. In some cases, TeX Live is distributed with a snapshot of the CTAN archive, which is entirely independent of and separable from TeX Live itself. (The "live" DVD in the TeX Collection is one example of this.) Please be aware that the CTAN snapshot contains many files which are *not* freely redistributable; see LICENSE.CTAN for more information. GUIDELINES FOR REDISTRIBUTION: In general, you may redistribute TeX Live, with or without modification, for profit or not, according to the usual free software tenets. Here are some general guidelines for doing this: - If you make any changes to the TeX Live distribution or any package it contains, besides complying with any licensing requirements, you must prominently mention such changes in your modified distribution so that users do not take your work for ours, and know to contact you, not us, in case of questions or problems. A new top-level README. file is a good place to describe the general situation. - Especially (but not necessarily) if changes or additions are made, we recommend a clearly different title, such as " DVD", based on TeX Live YYYY (with updates)", where YYYY is the year of TeX Live you are publishing. This credits both our work and yours. - You absolutely may *not* place your own copyright on the entire distribution, since it is not your work (as stated above, TeX Live is not created by any single person or entity). Statements such as "all rights reserved" and "may not be reproduced" are especially reprehensible, since they are antithetical to the free software principles under which TeX Live is produced. - You may use any cover or media label designs that you wish. Such packaging and marketing details are not covered by any TeX Live license. - Finally, we make the following requests (not legal requirements): a) Acknowledging that TeX Live is developed as a joint effort by all TeX user groups, and encouraging the user/reader to join their user group of choice. The web page http://www.tug.org/usergroups.html may be referenced as a list of TeX user groups. We also appreciate your explicitly listing all the user groups as given on that page, space permitting. b) Referencing the TeX Live home page: http://www.tug.org/tex-live/. c) Crediting the editor of the original TeX Live: Sebastian Rahtz. Such credits may be placed on the label of your media, your cover, and/or in accompanying text (for instance, in the acknowledgements section of a book). Finally, although it is certainly not a requirement, we'd like to invite any redistributors to make a donation to the project, whether cash or in-kind, for example via https://www.tug.org/donate.html. Thanks. If you have any questions or comments, *please* contact us. In general, we appreciate being given the chance to review any TeX Live-related material in advance of publication, simply to avoid mistakes. It is much better to correct text on a CD label or in a book before thousands of copies are made! We are also happy to keep anyone planning a publication informed as to our deadlines and progress. Just let us know. However, you should be aware that TeX Live is produced entirely by volunteers, and no dates can be guaranteed. LICENSING FOR NEW PACKAGES: Finally, we are often asked what license to use for new work. To be considered for inclusion on TeX Live, a package must use a free software license, such as the LaTeX Project Public License, the GNU General Public License, the X Window System license, the modified BSD license, etc., or be put into the public domain. Please see the url's below for more discussion of this. Thanks for your interest in TeX. - Karl Berry, editor, for the TeX Live team ------------------------------------------------------------ [*] Conflicts between FSF and Debian. The most notable instance of legal conflict between the FSF definition of "free software" and the Debian Free Software Guidelines is in regard to the GNU Free Documentation License when "invariant sections" (e.g., Front-Cover Texts, Back-Cover Texts, or Invariant Sections) are included. (FSF considers it free, of course, and Debian doesn't.) The most common instance of such a license is in documentation for official GNU packages -- such as GNU Texinfo, which is included in TeX Live. There may be other GFDL'd files with invariant sections as well; we have not exhaustively checked. For TeX Live, we decided to follow the FSF, rather than Debian. So such documentation *is* included in the original TeX Live distribution. (In repackagings of TL according to Debian rules, it is removed.) We surely wish these two major organizations in the free software world could cooperate on a documentation license acceptable to both. If other specific conflicts are brought to our attention, we will note them here. ------------------------------------------------------------ TeX Live mailing list: texlive@tug.org TeX Live home page: http://www.tug.org/tex-live/ The FSF's free software definition: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html Debian Free Software Guidelines: http://www.debian.org/intro/free FSF commentary on existing licenses: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html LPPL: http://latex-project.org/lppl.html or texmf/doc/latex/base/lppl.txt LPPL rationale: texmf/doc/latex/base/modguide.pdf