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+\centerline{\bf Copyright}
+\medskip
+\noindent
+One very recent \hax\ message concerned the
+issue of copyright. This struck a chord with me,
+since I recently obtained Pat Monardo's C-\TeX\
+(referred to here as CommonTeX),
+which contains a rider about copyright.
+The message was from Ozan Yigit (as Sebastian
+Rahtz said, the names are often unusual to
+British ears). Granted that all this is about US copyright law,
+I'm sure it still does have relevance to the future
+of `\TeX-in-C' at the least. I have abbreviated it
+only very slightly.
+ He (or she) writes:
+
+{\narrower
+\noindent
+``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 are 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\slash
+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 as the original ---
+in other words, mechanical and\slash or hand translation
+does not obliterate the original copyright.
+
+One lawyer, Jordan J. Breslow, did address the issue of
+`derivative works' in his most enlightening paper. 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. The same issue,
+of course, applies to the `copyleft' notice of
+Pat Monardo, for the CommonTeX implementation.''
+\smallskip}
+
+
+\rightline{\sl Malcolm Clark}
+\bigskip
+\centerline{\bf News from the other side}
+\medskip
+\noindent
+Not only do we have news from the west coast of the US,
+but there is also a resident UK\TeX ie at Harvard ---
+\DW. Dominik managed to achieve electronic communication
+with |texline@ic.cc.vaxa|, and I have synopsised
+some of his messages to give a Harvard-eye view
+of the \TeX\ world.
+
+I quote:
+{\narrower ``The latest \TeX\ news I have is that there
+is a \MF\ course next month at Radnor, Penn, which costs \$650
+to attend! Run by Doug Henderson, who did the Personal\TeX\
+implementation of \MF. The price is outrageous, and the same
+goes for the Protext conference here in Boston.
+
+Norman Naugle has a new \TeX\ previewer
+valled CDVI (or something) which is
+extremely good (according to him!): it is
+optimised to give very fast screen presentation of a
+|dvi| file, and apparently it can do
+all sorts of tricks with colour (why?) on an EGA.
+He will charge \$175 for it, and is still adding further
+graphics systems support to it, such as the Olivetti
+6300 $640\times400$ board.
+
+Frans Velthuis is bringing his work on
+Devanagari metafonts towards a conclusion.
+He has more or less linished the character set
+for Hindi, and is working on the few extra characters
+needed for Marathi and Sanskrit, and things like the
+numerals.''
+\smallskip}
+
+Dominik also raves about ``a fantastic little utility
+on the PC\TeX\ bulletin board'' which helps
+in the creation of CM fonts from the |.mf| files
+distributed with pc{\mf MF}. He also notes that
+it takes about eight hours to create all 74 CM
+fonts at one magnification on an 8 MHz AT.
+
+And lastly, he reminds me to say something about
+the programs Graham Asher and Clwyd Probert of Informat
+are writing:
+
+{\narrower\noindent``They are astounding. One creates gigantic \TeX\ macro files
+automatically, from choices you make on a large set of
+layered menus. The other, related program reads
+a {\it wysiwyg} table, and writes the \TeX\ code
+to typeset it! The dividing lines and corners, etc., can
+be any characters you choose. Again I was most impressed.''
+\smallskip}
+\noindent
+There will be something on these new \TeX\ add-on
+products at \TeX88. Graham will likely be giving at
+least one
+paper, and a hands-on demonstration must be
+inevitable. It is probably true that Informat is
+the most progressive hive of \TeX\ activity
+in the UK at present, as Graham's article
+in the previous \TeX line, `{\bf\TeX\ and the
+Linotron 101}' and the
+letter overleaf attests. Graham, Clwyd and the
+other programmers at Informat are producing some very powerful
+software which will help in increasing the use of
+\TeX. Although the menu-driven `front-end' bears
+some similarity to systems like {\it Page One},
+it is far more general, without being more
+cumbersome or difficult to use.
+
+\rightline{\sl Malcolm Clark}
+