Stirling Newberry wrote:
On Mar 2, 2005, at 8:42 AM, Stephen Forrest wrote:
On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 07:30:23 -0500, Stirling Newberry wrote
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.
Id est "work".
I'm not disparaging original writing in old languages, merely noting that there seems to be a great deal more enthusiasm for it, and therefore if we want to direct more of that energy to forms that benefit readers more, then something needs to be done to make that work more attractive to people who can do it. I must admit that I am guilty - as a classicist, I haven't put any time in on wikisource in latin or koine, even though I keep telling myself I should.
Caton has been doing a tremendous job of including the French version of many of these old texts on Wikisource. Stephen's interpretation of copyright law is far too restrictive and impractical. A copyright notice on a new edition of a classic is only copyright to the extent that it can be copyright. No publisher is going to go through the new edition to identify which details are copyright and which not. Common sense needs to prevail. The new commentaries and footnotes are indeed protected, but the minor variations that Stephen suggests are not copyrightable. A totally new translation could be copyright, but nobody is suggesting that we include those . . . unless some enthusiastic Wikisourceror wants to create a new translation himself and contribute it under GFDL.
Stirling, please don't suggest that people might need to work. It scares them away. :-)
I think that many more of these old texts are available than Stephen would have us believe. A lot of them are in back shelves of second hand bookstores where few people ever look. Many dealers would be glad to get rid of them, and there is some support for keeping them inches away from the garbage pail. If that doesn't work, there's also ebay and Abebooks. In other words, there are very few that cannot be easily found.
I agree too that we don't just want a lot of trained monkeys copying things from the internet. If someone has already done the work and put it on a reasonably stable site it is probably best left alone unless we intend to add value to the work. Adding something that no other site has is worth a lot more, but that involves an even more tedious kind of work: scanning and proofreading.
I prefer not to get into the arguments about whether we should have Wikipedias in obscure dead languages. I tend to take a whatever-turns-you-on attitude. The value in these old languages is in their original texts, and not in some supposed reincarnation that will see discussions of 21st century issues in languages where nobody maintains a conversation. The world is not well served by putting new vinegar in old wine bottles.
Ec