Marc Galli wrote:
I do not agree, because you have forgotten a important point : a database, even composed by texts in domain public, is not in the domain public : the work that provide contributors is under GFDL, therefore Wikisource, as a database, is under GFDL. When one give the whole access to this database without the consent of the contributors (as the foundation did), it is a massive violation of the contributors right. And the worst is of couEce this deny of credit : everybody is free to "give" his work to an assocation that sells it without his consent, but don't count on me.
Database protection laws do not apply outside of the European Union. Notably, the United States has no such laws. Even where database protection laws are applicable they mostly apply to a large scale extraction from that database.
I don't think that either GFDL or CC says anything about database rights. (...but I could be wrong about that.)
So far, there have not been a lot of new long translations on Wikisource. Promoting initial machine translations would avoid the problem of editors wanting credit.
Ec