The LPPL grew from Donald Knuth's original license for TeX, which states that the source code for TeX may be used for any purpose but a system built with it can only be called 'TeX' if it strictly conforms to his canonical program.

The incentive for this provision was to ensure that documents written for TeX will be readable for the foreseeable future – and TeX and its extensions will still compile documents written from the early 1980s to produce output exactly as intended.

Quoting Frank Mittelbach, the main author of the license:[1] "LPPL attempts to preserve the fact that something like LaTeX is a language which is used for communication, that is if you write a LaTeX document you expect to be able to send it to me and to work at my end like it does at yours".

This feature made some people deny that the LPPL is a free software license.

This can either be declared by the copyright holder or, in the event that the copyright holder is no longer able to be contacted, by the individual taking over maintenance, with a three-month gap after their public intention to take over the maintenance.