* David Picón Álvarez eleuteri@myrealbox.com [2008-02-07 12:36:05 +0100]:
Foremost freedom 0, freedom 1, freedom 2, and freedom 3. Then the copyleft. And the clear delineation of modifications. So I don't think it's fully fair to say he "does not want his work to be free."
Well, those freedoms require source. Sure, it's possible to edit PDFs, but I think you'd agree that not at the same semantic level at which it is possible to edit .tex source, same thing with source and binaries for software, in principle (and in practice) binary patches are possible.
I think it would be better if the students get the LaTeX code, than they can also learn how to make those nice documents. Or they can be told, that the paper was written under time pressure and therefor not very nice written. Patches to the tex file could get a bonus :) (e.g. put the the stuff under version control.)
Beside that PDF is listed as example for a transparent copy:
Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML, PostScript or PDF designed for human modification. (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html)
Best wishes, Matthias