On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 07:30:23 -0500, Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@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