Bug#538849: ITP: stardict-english-simpchinese -- Stardict package for English to and from Simplified Chinese dictionaries

[LIU Qi <liuqi82@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Aug 02, 2009 at 05:19:47PM +0900, Changwoo Ryu wrote:
 > 2009-08-02 (일), 11:16 +0800, LIU Qi:
 > > 
 > > 1. stardict1.3 dictionary: it is based on the dictinary in the stardict
 > > 1.3 written by Ma Suan. This software is under GPL-2. If it does not
 > > conform to the DFSG, it should not exist in Debian either. However it
 > > has been in the Debian for many years.
 > > 
 > > 2. xdict dictionary: xdict is also under GPL. And it has been in Debian.
 > > Please refer to the package: dict-xdict                                .
 > 
 > IIUC stardict and xdict *programs* are under GPL but I can't find how
 > their dictionaries have been built. They just have been labled as
 > "GPLed" without clue. The old dict-xdict ITP has no clear explanation
 > about this issue except the upstream README.
 > 
 > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=342816#15
 > 
 > A dictionary with reasonable quality is very difficult to build by
 > hackers for a short time. If such a big database appears suddenly by one
 > or a few hackers without a clear explanation, it is almost surely
 > converted from other dictionaries.
It is really hard to find the source of a dictionary which is made about
10 years ago. If there are license problems on these dictionaries, the
stardic and xdict also should be removed from Debian repos. We really
could not GUESS where the dictionaries come from. I will try to contact
to authors of these dictionaries. But don't be so hopeful.
 > 
 > > 3. cedict: it is under the CEDICT license.
 > 
 > I googled CEDICT and found the project used CC-BY-SA 3.0. Its dictionary
 > building history looks quite clear to me.
I hope so.

Thanks for your comments on these dictionaries.

Regards,
Qi

-- 
 LIU Qi

 liuqi82@gmail.com
 liuqi@printk.org

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