On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 07:30:23 -0500, Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry(a)xigenics.net> wrote:
[snip]
Moreover, there is something that these projects
detract from, which
needs help - namely wikisource. For every Latinist trying to figure out
how to write about the java programming language, there is one less
latinist to work on creating a wikisource version of latin texts, and
so on. It seems to me if there is all this energy for languages that
exist as source text, then there should be some way of making
wikisource a more attractive outlet for people's energy.
Part of the appeal of original composition is that the contributor
need not worry about copyrights. Obviously the original source texts
(i.e. manuscripts) are public domain, but published editions are
copyrighted.
This is usually due to new material (commentary, footnotes, etc.) but
there may also be alterations or regularization performed on the
source text, so I don't think one can trust that even that is
unencumbered, unless you get your hands on a fully public-domain
version. (Which, it should go without saying, does not mean something
grabbed from any old place on the Internet.) I suspect this is easy
for well-known texts (e.g. Cicero, Virgil), but finding unencumbered
versions of more obscure classical authors might require some digging.
Steve