[Foundation-l] Dead Sea Scrolls

[Gustavo Carrancio]

Hi, Gerard.

I supose you know what is paleography. And therefore you know that there is
an intrinsic value in a raw manuscript, which provides information about
schools of calligraphy, styles... an ancient manuscript is something like a
painting masterpiece. All those things can't be transmitted by the sole
transcription. Even more, a single fuzzy letter can challenge the whole
interpretation of the whole manuscript.

An example: The "Cantar de Mio Cid" codex ends with this blurry datation:

**Quien escrivió este libro de Dios paraíso, amen*
*Per Abbat le escrivió en el mes de mayo en era de mil e. CC XLV años* *

(May God give the paradise to the one who wrote this book, Amen
Abbot Peter wrote this book in the month of May of the era of thousand and
CC (gap) XLV year)

Well: the sole gap launched hard discussions lasting decades, because some
schollars stated that a C was deleted. You can imaginate that the solution
came from paleographic studies.


Now: think about that hebrew have had no vowels until mesorah. Transcription
can not be taken seriously in any conceivable way. Any transcription issue,
and I assure that will be thousands of them need to be backed in the same
manuscript. The high informative value of the manuscript is *the main reason
for copywriting it.*

All this *high value* information will be lost for the free kwnoledge with
the copywright, and its a very bad idea. It's a lost chance for the free
knowledge movement to resign.

So, please, Gerard, you know that I'm your fan, but understand that some
people can feel  disappointed about this copywriting and they want to make
something about it.

Yes, of course: we must be firmly polite, we must be patient and try to
explain the advantages of a public domain or at least a free licence over
the time, but we must not give up.

So, Gerard,