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Frank Mittelbach <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Sun, 21 Jul 2002 01:38:45 +0200
text/plain (31 lines)
Thomas Bushnell, BSG writes:
 > Boris Veytsman <[log in to unmask]> writes:
 > >    B. The *name* TeX is reserved for Knuth's program. If you program
 > >    is called TeX, it must satisfy triptest. You can NOT correct bugs
 > >    in this program, you cannot do Debian QA for it -- you either take
 > >    it as is or rename it.
 > No.  You are quite wrong.  Provided it still passes triptest, you can
 > call it TeX.  You certainly can correct bugs or do Debian QA, provided
 > the changes still pass triptest.

sorry but I fear it's you that is quite wrong. The triptest is only there to
help you determine that your implementation is okay. you are neither allowed
to fix bugs or add extra features (new commands, or whatever).

theroretically (now Goedel turns up again:-) a program is only allowed to
call itself TeX if it produces for all inputs exactly the same output compared
to the master copy in stanford (there are technically a bunch of exceptions
related to floating point stuff in dvi production, but that isn't related to
the argument.

have a look at Don's home page. there you find that upon his death TeX version
number goes up to \pi and from there on all bugs are by definition features.

of course you are allowedto rename the source files and produce whatever you
wish from them, but you are not allowed to call the resulting thing "TeX"
again not even if you have the most valid bug fix upon your sleave.