summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/Master/texmf-doc/doc/english/FAQ-en/html/FAQ-whyfree.html
blob: 1eacd739f6385a767c99f7cfedcc6bca178d8339 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
<head>
<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label whyfree</title>
</head><body>
<h3>If TeX is so good, how come it&rsquo;s free?</h3>
<p>It&rsquo;s free because Knuth chose to make it so.  He is nevertheless
apparently happy
that others should earn money by selling TeX-based services and
products. While several valuable TeX-related tools and packages are
offered subject to restrictions imposed by the GNU General Public
Licence (&lsquo;Copyleft&rsquo;), TeX itself is not subject to Copyleft.
<p>There are commercial versions of TeX available; for some users,
it&rsquo;s reassuring to have paid support.  What is more, some of the
commercial implementations
have features that are not available in free versions.  (The
reverse is also true: some free implementations have features
not available commercially.)
<p>This FAQ concentrates on &lsquo;free&rsquo; distributions of TeX, but we
do at least list the <a href="FAQ-commercial.html">major vendors</a>.
<p><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=whyfree">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=whyfree</a>
</body>