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authorKarl Berry <karl@freefriends.org>2009-05-22 23:51:44 +0000
committerKarl Berry <karl@freefriends.org>2009-05-22 23:51:44 +0000
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+<head>
+<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label nonfree</title>
+</head><body>
+<h3>What&rsquo;s the CTAN <code>nonfree</code> tree?</h3>
+<p/>When CTAN was founded, in the 1990s, it was unusual to publish
+the terms under which a TeX-related package was distributed (or, at
+any rate, to publish those terms formally).
+<p/>With the advent of the TeX <em>distributions</em>, however, people
+started to realise the need for such information, to protect those who
+create, distribute or sell the discs that hold the packages, etc.
+With the licence information available, the distributors can decide
+which packages may be distributed.
+<p/>The CTAN team decided that it would be useful for users (and
+distributors, not to say package authors) to separate packages that
+were candidates for distribution, and those that were in some sense
+&ldquo;not free&rdquo;. Thus was the <code>nonfree</code> tree born.
+<p/>From the start, the <code>nonfree</code> tree was controversial: the terms
+under which a package would be placed on the tree were hotly
+contested, and the CTAN team were only able slowly to populate
+the tree. It is now obvious to the team that the project would never
+be completed.
+<p/>The CTAN catalogue now records the nature of the licences of a
+good proportion of the packages it describes (though there remain
+several for which the licence is unknown, which is as good, for the
+distributors, as a licence forbidding distribution). Since the
+catalogue&rsquo;s coverage of CTAN is good (and slowly improving),
+the general rule for distributors has become
+<blockquote>
+&ldquo;if the package is listed in the catalogue, check there to see
+whether you should distribute; if the package is not listed in the
+catalogue, don&rsquo;t think of distributing it&rdquo;.
+</blockquote><p>
+<p/>(The catalogue only has a modest
+<a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/licenses.html">list of licences</a>, but it covers the set used
+by packages on CTAN, with a wild-card &ldquo;<code>other-free</code>&rdquo;
+which covers packages that the CTAN administrators believe to
+be free even though the authors haven&rsquo;t used a standard licence.)
+<p/>In the light of the above, the <code>nonfree</code> tree is being
+dismantled, and its contents moved to the main CTAN tree. So
+the answer to the question is, now, &ldquo;the nonfree tree is a part of
+CTAN, and is now being merged with the main tree&rdquo;.
+<p/><p/>
+
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+<p/>
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+<p/>
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+
+
+<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=nonfree">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=nonfree</a>
+</body>