Hi, -------- Original-Nachricht -------- > Datum: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:06:28 +0100 > Von: Lars Aronsson <[email protected]>
> > In order to license, you need copyright. For example, you cannot > put old source code by Leonardo da Vinci under GPL, because > its copyright has expired. If the creators of the Italian spelling > dictionary do claim copyright, under what country's laws is that? > Under the laws of Sweden and many other European countries, > simple spelling dictionaries (lists and catalogs) are not covered > by copyright, but instead by a "catalog protection" which expires > after 15 years. That means, all spelling dictionaries from 1995 > or earlier have now fallen into the public domain. If it is in exactly the same form as it was before 1995 ... Btw. in German law, exactly the same rules apply for "collections of works, data or other independent elements, that are individual creations because of the selection or composition of the elements ..." So if you don't like to check local law for each dicitionary, you should rather respect the license. And .. dictionary are much more than just "a list of words". Whoever tells something like that did likely not try to create a dictionary for some more complex language. E.g. German spell checking dictionaries have rules for suffiy, affix, infix, compound words, words that must not be used as first or last part in a compound word, words that must not be used as suggestion for corrections etc. regards, André
