oz@yetti.UUCP (Ozan Yigit) (09/26/87)
I have been following, with great interest, the recent chatter surrounding the C implementation (Ctex) of tex. Many institutions may have now discovered that the copies of Ctex obtained from Texas A&M is not (somehow) legal, as indicated by Tomas Rokiki, who has a copyright notice on Ctex sources. I would like to suggest that there has possibly been an abuse of the US copyright laws, and both Ctex and CommonTex cannot, in fact, carry anyone else's copyright except that of Don Knuth, and hence, carry the same distribution rights/restrictions [if any] of the original TeX. Why: If I am not mistaken, US copyright laws suggest that a translation of an originally copyrighted work carries the same copyright of the original - in other words, mechanical and/or hand translation does not obliterate the original copyright. Here is the header of tex.web: % This program is copyright (C) 1982 by D. E. Knuth; all rights are reserved. % Copying of this file is authorized only if (1) you are D. E. Knuth, or if % (2) you make absolutely no changes to your copy. (The WEB system provides % for alterations via an auxiliary file; the master file should stay intact.) One lawyer, Jordan J. Breslow, did address the issue of "derivative works" in his most enlightening paper [may be found under the doc directory of news 2.11 distribution]. He indicates that the translation of, say a copyrighted COBOL program to BASIC would be the infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive right to make derivative works. Is there something missing ?? Did Don Knuth drop his copyright on TeX ?? Now, it is possible that there exists a license arrangement between Tomas Rokiki and Don Knuth, which allows Tomas to claim copyright on Ctex. If such is the case, I would like to know about it, so that I can understand a request to flush all binaries and sources of Ctex obtained from Texas A&M. Same issue, of course, applies to the "copyleft" notice of Pat Monardo, for the CommonTex implementation. NOTE: This article is not meant to insult the authors of Ctex and CommonTex, and does not in any way meant to invalidate the appreciation they deserve for the substential amount of work to generate C versions of TeX. It is merely meant to encourage a discussion and/or clarification of the legal statues of such implementations, and to hopefully produce a better understanding of the copyright issues with regards to "derivative" works. Hence, any flames should be directed to /dev/null. oz
dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) (09/29/87)
In article <4760@ncoast.UUCP> allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) writes:
<<This program is copyright (C) 1982 by D. E. Knuth; all rights are reserved.
<<Copying of this file is authorized only if (1) you are D. E. Knuth, or if
<<(2) you make absolutely no changes to your copy. (The WEB system provides
<<for alterations via an auxiliary file; the master file should stay intact.)
<
<As I read this, this means that I cannot get a copy of TeX from the U. of
<Washington (presumably the original Pascal version straqight from Don Knuth)
<and run it through p2c, even for my own use.
<
<Is this correct? Must I either (a) try to find a Pascal compiler for my
<3B1 (ha ha good luck sucker) or (b) be stuck with nroff for the rest of my
<life (AAAAAARRRRGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!)?
Federal copyright law explicitly permits the modification of software
as an essential step in using the software.
--
Rahul Dhesi UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesichongo@amdahl.amdahl.com (Landon Curt Noll) (09/30/87)
As quoted from <167@yetti.UUCP> by oz@yetti.UUCP (Ozan Yigit): >+--------------- >| % This program is copyright (C) 1982 by D. E. Knuth; all rights are reserved >| % Copying of this file is authorized only if (1) you are D. E. Knuth, or if >| % (2) you make absolutely no changes to your copy. (The WEB system provides >| % for alterations via an auxiliary file; the master file should stay intact. How do they expect to enforce the 'no changes' section of this copyright? Are they going to checksum each version that they find? Are they going to drag someone into court because their Pascal compiler makes an altered copy of TeX by rewriting it in assembler? Do they really think that someone won't edit the source to get it to compile on their compiler? I can understand how they can prevent you from making and/or distributing copies. I can also understand that they can prevent you from distributing alter sources or derived sources. But a 'no changes' to your copy clause? The copyright gets even more BOGUS when you consider that Knuth claims that TeX is in the public domain! No, I don't have a copy of TeX, nor do I plan to as long as it has bogus copyright restrictions on it. chongo <maybe i'll take a MIX version of TeX :-}> /\oo/\ -- [views above shouldn't be viewed as Amdahl views, or as views from Amdahl, or as Amdahl views views, or as views by Mr. Amdahl, or as views from his house]
rokicki@rocky.UUCP (09/30/87)
> % This program is copyright (C) 1982 by D. E. Knuth; all rights are reserved > % Copying of this file is authorized only if (1) you are D. E. Knuth, or if > % (2) you make absolutely no changes to your copy. (The WEB system provides > % for alterations via an auxiliary file; the master file should stay intact. > > How do they expect to enforce the 'no changes' section of this copyright? > Are they going to checksum each version that they find? Are they going > to drag someone into court because their Pascal compiler makes an altered > copy of TeX by rewriting it in assembler? Do they really think that someone > won't edit the source to get it to compile on their compiler? Please, give Don a bit more credit than that. First of all, the Pascal compiler's transformation into assembly creates a file which is not a copy of the original, and it is also a necessary step to get the program to work on a machine. Secondly, as the message above states, the WEB system allows you to make any necessary changes in a small auxillary file. The WEB system's macro processor allows global changes to be stated once, and the program is written so as to isolate those system dependent changes. This also allows you to update your version of TeX simply by getting the new master copy and using the same auxillary file with your local changes. And, no, nobody is going to checksum each version they find. Rather, no one may distribute a version of TeX that does not fit the following three criteria: 1. It must pass a standard validation suite called `trip', with identical results to the master copy. This test suite exercises all of the lines in the code except a few seriously fatal error messages, including the limitations of the program. 2. It work reasonably well and identicallly on `normal' documents (which trip certainly is not.) 3. The implementer must be happy with his implementation. Only (1) and (2) of the above can be tested, but if a version is found that violates either of these, and is called TeX, its distribution will be stopped. -tom