[cc-licenses] Most important feature: GPL-compatibility

Francesco Poli invernomuto at paranoici.org
Wed Jan 11 17:19:13 EST 2012


On Thu, 5 Jan 2012 10:13:33 -0500 drew Roberts wrote:

> On Wednesday 04 January 2012 17:00:41 Francesco Poli wrote:
[...]
> > Hence, distributing this PDF file under the terms of the CC-by-sa
> > license, without making LaTeX source available, is like saying:
> > "you *may* modify it, but, good luck, if you *actually* want to do so!"
> 
> And if you never had latex yourself in the first place?

The definition of source is flexible enough to cope with this scenario.

If a recipient is not able or not willing to use LaTeX in order to
modify the source, he/she may take the work in some other form (in PDF
format, for instance), possibly convert it into another form, and
modify it in that other form.
At *that* point, the source for that particular modified version of the
work, is no longer LaTeX code, since, for *that modified version*, the
preferred form for making further modifications is really the other
format. This is the actual source for the *modified version* of the
work, while the source for the *original work* is still LaTeX code.

The same thing happens if I find a GPL-licensed program written in,
say, Pascal, and I decide that I prefer to translate it into, say,
Python, before modifying it.

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