Bug#602781: Licenses for DAISY DTDS: ANSI/NISO Z39.86 Specifications for the Digital Talking Book
To whom it may concern:
Recently a question came in from Mattia Rizzolo about the licenses associated with the DAISY DTDs. The DAISY Consortium is the maintenance agency for the ANSI/NISO Z39.86 Specification for the Digital Talking Book. NISO is the Standards organization that has issued this Standard, but it is commonly called the DAISY standard.
The DTDs are freely available from DAISY website; start at:
http://www.daisy.org/z3986 There is no cost associated with the use of these DTDs.
Many companies will copy and distribute these DTDs for use with their authoring or playback tools, which is perfectly fine. This may eliminate the need to go online for validation, etc.
The working group may update the DTDs if errors are found and this will be announced publically.
The DTDs were developed and highly influenced by HTML and Docbook.
The DTDs may be modified for your use, but you may not claim that a modified version conforms to the DAISY Standard or the Niso Z39.86 Standard. It is common for XML and DTD developers to borrow from various standards, and this is expected.
You may want to look at the ANSI/NISO Z39.98 specification for a more up-to-date mechanism for content creation that conforms to XML.
I hope this answers any questions about the appropriate use of these DTDs.
George Kerscher Ph.D.
-In our Information Age, access to information is a fundamental human right.
Secretary General, DAISY Consortium
http://www.daisy.org
Senior Officer, Accessible Technology Learning Ally Together It’s Possible
http://www.LearningAlly.org
President, International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)
http://www.idpf.org
Member of the National Museum and Library Services Board (IMLS)
http://www.imls.gov
Chair Steering Council Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), a division of the W3C
http://www.w3c.org/wai
Phone: +1 406/549-4687
Cell:+1 406/544-2466
Email: kerscher@montana.com
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