"Wallace" == Wallace J McLean <ag737@freenet.carleton.ca> writes:
Wallace> ----- Original Message ----- From: Carlo Traverso Wallace> <traverso@dm.unipi.it> Date: Tuesday, November 9, 2004 Wallace> 2:43 pm Subject: Re: [PGCanada] Introductions, etc. >> Does this have a technical motivation? (for example, avoid the >> complications of UTF-8 being life+50) Or just to have a >> companion to PG-CA? Wallace> A legal one: Stuff that would be eligible for a Wallace> PG-Canada, and hence likely to draw even more Canadian Wallace> volunteers, can't always legally be done through Wallace> DP-INT. There are thousands of PD works under life+50 in Wallace> Canada that won't be eligible under the PG/DP American Wallace> copyright rules. We could do them in an all-Canadian Wallace> site, but not the existing PG/DP site. Wallace> Or, we can funnel it all through DP-EU, assuming that Wallace> there are no further complications legally. Do they Wallace> operate under life+50, and if so where are they Wallace> depositing their texts? They operate in serbia, life+50, the repository for non-PG clearable texts will be the announced PG-Europa (serbia too), announced to start in short time (this week maybe...). We have a backlog of posting for all the texts that we have done under life+50 rules. I expect to mutually mirror between the two sites. >> The effort to bring up a DP site is non negligeable, much more >> than overcoming the utf-8 barier; DP-EU still has space to >> grow, and will surely welcome new forces. For example, our >> waiting lists are empty, anything that you want to post is >> welcome. When DP-EU has grown, and canadian squirrels matured, >> detaching a canadian clone might be much easier. Currently, a >> division of efforts might create problems to both. Wallace> And on the other hand, an all-Canadian, or an Wallace> international non- national life+50 version of DP might Wallace> help draw more volunteers out of the woodwork. one of the main focus of DP-EU is to allow non-western alphabets. These include currently cyrillic, east-european (polish, chech, romanian...) greek and arabic characters (urdu). Most work however is done in english,(150 books) french(80) and serbian(140 books in 8 months of operation). A special emphasis has been posed into having user interfaces, documentation and discussion forums in different languages (currently 13 languages). Some of the more affectionate users of DP-EU are canadian, both english and french speaking. Wallace> On the Project Gutenberg business itself, setting aside Wallace> the big and valuable and important work done by the DP Wallace> annex, a Canadian branch plant would allow the "Canadian Wallace> editions" of PG texts -- whether transferred from PG Wallace> where eligible, or created under life+ rules outside the Wallace> US -- to get (free) ISBNs for those editions. This may Wallace> have usefulness down the road, as has been discussed on Wallace> the DP forums. ISBN would be great. I strongly support PG-CA, just DP-CA is IMHO a little premature, until DP-EU is further grown. Carlo