On Thu, May 12, 2005 at 07:48:56AM -0500, Joshua Hutchinson wrote:

The future "master format" that you may hear people talk about will have something like this.

PGTEI uses a divGen line to add the license when the master file is converted to text or html or PDF or ...

The true ease will be in that changing one master license file will update the license in all the files in the archive.

But, for legal reasons, we need the license in all the text and html files.

Josh

----- Original Message ----- From: bill <bill@truthdb.org> To: gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org Subject: [gutvol-d] Re:making CD / DVD best of 2005--how and which books? Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 02:44:15 -0400

...

I know this is likely not practical but I would like to see a read-only medium where the legalese was exised out of the texts and stored in a license.txt in the root of the file system. This would save a ton of space and allow for more texts within the iso.I appreciate that the legal text has changed over the years and is not consistant for all books but a notation "Licence--#01" or whatever at the head of the book would allow you to cross-reference the license file. Surely a one line system such as this would save bandwidth and storage space while maintaining whatever legal requirements that must be met.

Josh has it right. Just to agree and amplify: it's OK for readers & redistributors of our eBooks to move the license etc. to a separate hyperlinked file. (This is explicit in the license: http://gutenberg.org/license , then to the HOWTO) But we made a policy decision to *always* include the full license & other header stuff in the eBooks as *we* distribute them, including on CD/DVD. This is not stricly a legal requirement, but something we believe is in our best interest, because it makes it far easier for anyone who redistributes an eBook to do so with the license "intact." ** For people generating reformatted versions "on the fly," I expect to offer them an option of where/how to display the license. The minimum will be something like our first lines currently, perhaps in the "verso" location of a reformatted eBook: Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. The license is not a static thing. We do change it over the years. I'm sure we'll want to do some revisions as we move into PGTEI and various conversion options. So, don't feel that today's way is the "only" way. -- Greg