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From: dhosek@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Donald Hosek)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: Licensing fees for Tex?!
Message-ID: <1729@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
Date: 27 Aug 89 05:19:59 GMT
References: <8210007@hp-lsd.HP.COM>
Reply-To: dhosek@jarthur.UUCP (Donald Hosek)
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA
Lines: 45

In article <8210007@hp-lsd.HP.COM> davek@hp-lsd.HP.COM (Dave Kumpf) writes:
>I was reading an old Seybold Report last night and encountered the following
>statement:
>
>"Knuth's source code for Tex has been published by Addison-Wesley (Reading,
>MA) and can be licensed for commercial purposes at nominal cost from the
>American Mathematical Society (Long Island, NY)."
>
>(The Seybold Report on Desktop Publishing, April 4, 1988, p. 12)
>
>Yet the copyright notice on TeX:The Program says that Knuth has placed the
>program TeX into the public domain, and that the reader is free to use the
>algorithms in his own code.  Further reading indicates that only programs
>which conform exactly (other than system dependencies) to the published
>algorithms may be called TeX.  There is no mention of licensing requirements
>or fees for any purpose, including commercial use.
>
>What's the real story? Are the TeX algorithms in the public domain only
>if the use is non-commercial?  Why doesn't the copyright notice in TeX:The 
>Program say that?  What would really hold in court?
>

People can use TeX for whatever they like without paying any license fee.
I have no idea where the Seybold report got their information but I can't
think of any possible interpretation of that statement which reflects the
truth.

A couple of examples: (1) many commercial installations use TeX for in-house
reports and their own publications--they pay no license fee; (2) numerous
publishers use TeX for producing their hardcopy and also pay no license fee;
(3) there are numerous commercial versions of TeX (e.g., pcTeX, TurboTeX,
Textures, Northlake Software's VMS TeX, $\mu$-TeX, CTeX, The Arbortext TeX
distributions, AmigaTeX, ST TeX, and probably others which have escaped my
recall) which are distributed without paying any license fee as well as 
at least one TeX-like program (VAX DOCUMENT's back end) which is based on
the code.

I have however, just realized the source of the confusion. The AmS-TeX macros
are owned by the American Math Society and to use those, one must pay a 
license fee if the use is commercial (take a look at the \everyjob message 
sometime). This, most likely is the source of the confusion.

-dh

P.S. keep your eyes peeled for news of TeX 3.0 and MF 2.0