Yikes! I sent a request for permission to use the modified 1913 Webster dictionary definitions yesturday and today I got the below response. I'll probably need help answering some of these.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

---------- Forwarded Message ----------

Subject: Re: Wikipedia.org request use of your modified 1913 dictionary definitions Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 08:43:20 -0400 From: Patrick Cassidy cassidy@micra.com To: Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com

Mr. Mayer, Thanks for your inquiry about the modified Webster (copied below). To answer the main question, the GCIDE files available on the GNU server are freely usable under the GNU GPL. Since it appears that you plan to freely distribute any materials taken from the GCIDE, I can't think of any reason why there should be any limit on your use of the contents of the GCIDE, or any part of it. The GNU site version lags my latest master version typically by several months to a year, though the differences are mainly in a few typos being corrected here and there. I am making some slight changes in format, and there should be another version available in a month or two. If you would like, I can make it available to you before it gets eventually to the GNU site. From what I have seen thus far, it seems that there should likewise be no impediment to my copying and including any relevant articles from Wikipedia into future versions of the GCIDE (with references, of course) -- is this correct? The hypertext format of the Wiki differs from the present format of the GCIDE, and I would expect only some articles, or quotations from them, to be included in GCIDE. In most cases it would be better to just have a reference to one of your pages, where appropriate. I only include parts of materials already on the web where the relevant passages form only a small part of an article, or I am afraid that the site will disappear soon. This is the first I have become aware of the Wikipedia or of Nupedia, and it does appear that the purpose of the Webster and of these projects are similar though the Webster does concentrate on having definitions of words and phrases, in order to provide at least a little information on every topic. I will try to look further at Wiki and Nupedia to gain a better acquaintance. If it appears that there are adequate quality controls, I may suggest to anyone willing to submit articles to GCIDE that they also submit them to the Wiki and/or Nupedia projects. I am very occupied right now with a different project, so this may take a while. I am also curious as to whether you have explored the possibility of submitting any of your articles to the Open Mind project at MIT? The GCIDE, Nupedia, Wikipedia and Open Mind all have the problem of getting volunteers to contribute serious effort. It would be good if there were a mechanism to be sure that any such contributed effort would be available to all [projects to use, perhaps in slightly different ways. I am also curious to know how the Wiki project is supported, if at all. I have been working on the Webster as a personal effort, and it has no financial support from external sources. Is this also true of Wikipedia and Nupedia?

I'm glad to see at last that there are others trying to get useful information organized into a free downloadable encyclopedia-format collection on the Web. Congratulations on your progress so far. I am impressed that you have already obtained 40,000 articles -- are these all recently written by volunteers? I do hope that we can keep in touch and share any resources, so as to avoid any unnecessary duplication of effort. Thus far I have been concentrating on using older (pre-1923) public domain materials, to permit the widest possible use and redistribution. For technical materials, however, there is no substitute for an up-to-date article from an expert.

Best regards, Pat

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Daniel Mayer wrote:

Hello,

I am one of the administrators of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia and would like to know if it would be permissable for us to use your online dictionary database as one of our sources for article definitions (this would be done one article at a time where needed). Succinctly defining a term is oftentimes the most difficult thing to do when generating encyclopedia articles from scratch and it is our goal to first define each article before going into detail (creating a hybrid dictionary/encyclopedia -- although we do not encourage covering topics that can only be dictionary entries).

All of our contributors and administrators freely donate their spare time in creating encyclopedia articles and these works are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL) which encourages collaboration and the sharing of ideas by ensuring content generated under this license is made forever free for other people to do the same. A copy of GNU FDL license can be accessed at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html#TOC2 and a copy of Wikipedia's copyright policy is at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/wikipedia:copyrights

We already have nearly 40,000 articles and I think both Wikipedia and MICRA aim to create something similar given your own stated goals to provide a "starting point for development of a modern on-line comprehensive encyclopedic dictionary, by the efforts of all individuals willing to help build a large and freely available knowledge base."

We could make it a Wikipedia policy, enforced by our administrators, to credit MICRA and the place where your version of the dictionary resides, dict.org, for any content our contributors take from the 1913 dictionary you provide.

Daniel Mayer

-- ============================================= Patrick Cassidy

MICRA, Inc. || (908) 561-3416 735 Belvidere Ave. || (908) 668-5252 (if no answer) Plainfield, NJ 07062-2054 || (908) 668-5904 (fax)

internet: cassidy@micra.com =============================================

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