Re: [Savannah-hackers] submission of ZEDICT: Zaurus English-Japanese Dictiona - savannah.gnu.org

[Erwan Loisant]

Loic Dachary wrote:
> Erwan Loisant writes:
>  > Loic Dachary wrote:
>  > >      Hi,
>  > > 
>  > > 	The dictionary license is not Free Software (commercial use 
>  > > restrictions, distribution restrictions and various others) and cannot
>  > > be hosted on Savannah. Could you please get in touch with people publishing
>  > > this dictionary and convince them it would be beneficial to the world if
>  > > they publish it under a Free Software / Free Documentation license ?
>  > 
>  > 
>  > He already published it under GPL a few years ago but for some reasons 
>  > he changed hes mind ; so he knows well about GPL and he must have good 
>  > reasons to have changed hes mind.
>
>         I doubt these are good reasons but you're right that it is
> unlikely he will change his mind.
>
>  > If you don't mind I will host only the software at Savannah and tell my 
>  > users to get the dictionary file from an other source, or find an other 
>  > dictonary of the same format.
>
>         The problem now is that your software depends on non-free data.
> Does it support other dictionaries or is it only useful with these non
> free dictionaries ? 


The dictionary format is very general, it is a text format where each 
line represent a word:
KANJI [HIRAGANA] /english1/english2/[...]/

This is obviously known as the "edict format" and anyone could write hes 
own dictionary (with the licence he likes) using this format. However, I 
don't know if someone released a dictionary using edict format with a 
free software licence. I did not find one.

There are very few english/japanese dictionary suitable for non-japanese 
people (including prononciation) and edict is very popular because it is 
free of charges and can be distributed with free software. Moreover, it 
is maintained by a university professor famous in the lexical databases 
field.

At the point you have all information so please tell me if you accept or 
not my project, if you don't it is better to tell it now so I can find 
an other host.


Thank you,
Erwan Loisant.