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From: oz@yetti.UUCP (Ozan Yigit)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st,comp.sources.d,misc.legal,alt.config
Subject: Copyright status of Ctex and Common-Tex: whose copyright ???
Message-ID: <167@yetti.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 26-Sep-87 16:19:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: yetti.167
Posted: Sat Sep 26 16:19:39 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 27-Sep-87 09:22:15 EDT
Reply-To: oz@yetti.UUCP (Ozan Yigit)
Distribution: world
Organization: York U. Computer Science
Lines: 48
Keywords: tex, translation, derivative-work, copyrights
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.atari.st:5315 comp.sources.d:1294 misc.legal:2867 alt.config:44

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