[tex-live] License of TeX

[Karl Berry]

    Medium. :-)

Are you volunteering to do the work of re-integrating it with
web2c/teTeX/TeX Live?  Not to mention MiKTeX.

Meanwhile, all the other tex.web-based programs (e.g., tex, omega,
aleph) will now have to be updated/built independently, and changes made
redundantly in multiple places if things are to stay in sync.  That's
actually the work I was most concerned about.  But I guess there is no
alternative at this point.

(I do understand how development is made much more efficient with a
single pdftex.web.)

    Yes. No. 

So if you're dropping kpathsea, will pdftex still read texmf.cnf files?
Pay attention to the same environment variables, with the same syntax?
Do subdir searching?  I.e., is the user-level search interface to be the
same as kpathsea, or was compatibility not a concern?

With these laconic answers, I feel like I'm begging for scraps.
You've apparently made a decision which will impact every distribution
and potentially every TeX user, and we only heard about it by accident.
Can you please be a little more forthcoming?

    Check out the latest pdfTeX 1.40-beta. :-)

Nothing on pdftex.org.  Nothing on pdftex.sarovar.org.  Ah, there it is,
at
http://sarovar.org/download.php/913/pdftex-1.40.0-beta-20060213.tar.bz2.
I should have known, I guess.

Ok, I got it, but I see nothing in the NEWS file about eliminating
kpathsea, and indeed, kpathsea is still in the source tarball.  Where am
I supposed to look?  What is the story?  Please answer in more than one
syllable :).

karl