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Message-ID:  <4.3.1.2.20050922150414.01d91940@cits1.stanford.edu>
Date:         Thu, 22 Sep 2005 16:05:14 -0700
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From: Brooks Moses <bmoses@STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Another request for clarification: LPPL, section 6b.
To: LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE
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Status: R

Dear LaTeX-Project people:

(First, let me publicly thank Frank Mittelbach for his answers to my last 
question -- I continued the conversation with him privately as the details 
seemed a bit off-topic, but I should thank him here as well.)

I have a another request for clarification of the LPPL, this time regarding 
section 6b, which requires: "Every component of the Derived Work contains 
prominent notices detailing the nature of the changes to that component, or 
a prominent reference to another file that is distributed as part of the 
Derived Work and that contains a complete and accurate log of the changes."

At present, I am currently working on a set of mathematics module files to 
be used with ConTeXt; one of the modules contains about 30 lines that are 
derived from the LaTeX lttab.dtx kernel file, though with considerable changes.

Is section 6b intended to require, as a strict interpretation of it would 
seem to state, that all of the modules in my package shall require a 
"prominent notice detailing the nature of the changes", even though only 
one module contains anything derived from LaTeX code?  (I would think not, 
but that's what the letter of it appears to me to currently say.)

If such notices are required even in the files which do not contain any 
LaTeX code, what is this "notice detailing the nature of the changes" 
expected to look like in those cases?

Meanwhile, for the 30 lines that _have_ been derived from LaTeX code -- 
nearly every line has been changed in some way.  I would imagine that a 
statement along the lines of "[This section] is based on a heavily modified 
version of the array implementation in lttab.dtx from the LaTeX kernel, 
version [whatever]" would satisfy the intent of the restriction, in that it 
makes it clear that none of this code shall be assumed to be 
unmodified.  Is this in fact sufficient to comply?  (I'm a little unsure 
whether the word "detailing" is intended to require a detailed accounting....)

...

Also, is there a standard wording for "This file is licensed under the 
LPPL, and parts of it are derived from file XYZ so you need to observe the 
LPPL file-identification restrictions with regards to that as well"?

What about "This file is licensed under the LPPL, except that I don't care 
whether you call your derived work the same thing as I'm calling this, but 
parts of it are derived from file XYZ so you need to observe the LPPL 
file-identification restrictions with regards to that"?

Thanks much!
- Brooks


P.S. My apologies for sending so many nit-picky license questions to the 
list; I hope it's not annoying too many people!