Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> writes:
> Scripsit Brian Nelson <nelson@bignachos.com>
>
>> Ugh, please respect the MFT header because the Aspell maintainer is not
>> subscribed to d-l.
>
> Yeah. Other people complain vehemently unless I send my replies to
> debian-legal and only debian-legal. I do try my best.
As long as you always respect the MFT and MCT headers, no one should
complain.
>> Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> writes:
[snip]
> Note that there is no protection on the mere idea of "the N most
> common words in English", but that description leaves an awful amount
> up to choice - each time it is implemented the result is going to be
> different with a very high probablity. When do you count something as
> a "word"? What do you recognize as legitimate alternative spellings
> and what will you reject as spelling errors. When is a word more
> common than another? When it occurs more frequently in some text
> corpus? How do you select a corpus to begin with (*lots* of room for
> choice here). Do you recognize personal names - sometimes they would
> be likely to be spelling errors when they don't refer to the
> appropriate person? Etc. etc. etc. For many of these problems it is
> impossible to set down fixed rules in advance - you'll have to do a
> judgement call in *many* concrete circumstances. I hold that the
> exercise of such judgement calls is a sufficiently *creative* activity
> that its result ought to receive copyright protection.
OK, then following this reasoning, the aspell-en maintainer can review
each word in the DEC word list, decide that each one is acceptable for
inclusion (maybe throw out one or two for good measure), and then
declare the new list as an original work. He can copyright it as his
own, license it under a DFSG-free license, and then everyone is happy.
Can you do this, Kevin, and finally end this absurd discussion?
--
People said I was dumb, but I proved them!
Reply to: