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Current version of the LPPL

The LaTeX project public license is a free software license. The most recent version of the LPPL is version 1.3c. The latest version, in plain text, can always be found at https://latex-project.org/lppl.txt. There is also a LaTeX version of the license, which authors of LPPL software are encouraged to include in their manuals.

The article Reflections on the history of the LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL) - A software license for LaTeX and more gives some background information on the license, explains it components and the reasons behind it.

How to use the LPPL

To use this license, place in each of the components of your work both an explicit copyright notice including your name and the year the work was authored and/or last substantially modified. Include also a statement that the distribution and/or modification of that component is constrained by the conditions in this license.

Here is an example of such a notice and statement:

%% pig.dtx
%% Copyright 2008 M. Y. Name
%
% This work may be distributed and/or modified under the
% conditions of the LaTeX Project Public License, either version 1.3
% of this license or (at your option) any later version.
% The latest version of this license is in
%   https://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt
% and version 1.3c or later is part of all distributions of LaTeX
% version 2008 or later.
%
% This work has the LPPL maintenance status `maintained'.
% 
% The Current Maintainer of this work is M. Y. Name.
%
% This work consists of the files pig.dtx and pig.ins
% and the derived file pig.sty.

Given such a notice and statement in a file, the conditions given in this license document would apply, with the `Work’ referring to the three files `pig.dtx’, `pig.ins’, and `pig.sty’ (the last being generated from `pig.dtx’ using `pig.ins’), the `Base Interpreter’ referring to any `LaTeX-Format’, and both `Copyright Holder’ and `Current Maintainer’ referring to the person `M. Y. Name’.

Versions of the LPPL

Version 1.3c should be used for all new works distributed under the LPPL.

If a work refers to LPPL 1.3 as its license (like the example above) this is interpreted as the latest version of the 1.3 license, i.e., version 1.3c!

Previous versions of the 1.3 set of licenses are listed below for reference purposes only; they differ from the current version only in minor ways, where it was necessary to reclarify or correct certain statements in the license.

Unofficial (contributed) translations of the LPPL

The translations in this section are offered with the intention of helping people to understand the LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL). They are, however, not official translations nor are they, in the legal sense, acknowledged.