On 2016-03-25 12:23, Richard Fontana wrote:
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.
No, but OTOH MMIX is just a standalone program, not a set of macros
meant for inclusion like LaTeX is, so I'm not sure that this is
comparable one way or the other. IANAL but I suspect the *intention*
was (particularly given the author's wording on his other major work)
that anyone is free to modify but they may not then call it "MMIX".
Note that, aside from the license boilerplate, the source files
correspond to the program names, so one practically necessitates the other.
There is also mention of using CWEB change-files in both the license and
the README. Therefore, this could be interpreted as a rule about *how*
the files should be modified, not if, which is acceptable to the FSF:
"However, rules about how to package a modified version are acceptable
... it is acceptable for the license to require that you change the name
of the modified version, remove a logo, or identify your modifications
as yours."
--
Yaakov Selkowitz
Associate Software Engineer, ARM
Red Hat, Inc.
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