Re: Version 3.39 of the Lout document formatting system now available

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

address@hidden (Jeff Kingston) writes:

> Version 3.39 of the Lout document formatting system is now available
> from the usual place:
>
>   ftp://ftp.it.usyd.edu.au/jeff/lout/lout-3.39.tar.gz

Great!

I just uploaded the file to Savannah (signed with my key), which works
better than University of Sydney’s FTP site for me and is mirrored:

  http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/lout/

Here’s some additional background about the news.

>    Added copyright notices to many files, to satisfy the Savannah
>      people.  There is no change in what is permitted.  Files that
>      go to make up an output file are either public domain or else
>      carry this additional wording, supplied by the Savannah people:
>      "As a special exception, when this file is read by Lout when
>      processing a Lout source document, you may use the result
>      without restriction."

The Savannah and FSF volunteers kindly reviewed the Lout code and
identified this loophole: without the special exception, Lout source
documents would fall under the GPL, which wasn’t intended.

In addition, many files lacked a copyright and license header, which
Jeff fixed.

So thanks to Jeff and to them!

>    Things not done
>
>    It was suggested that using a version control system (in
>      particular, svn) would be a good idea.  I thought about
>      it but decided that there was too little change going on
>      to make it worth my while, at the moment anyway.

Lack of a public VCS prevents people from knowing what’s going on.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that few people have contributed to
Lout over the years; users have de facto been “customers”.

Of course, there are other reasons, but this has certainly played an
important role IMO.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

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