[gnome-cy] ACCAC: open-sourcing Y Termiadur

[Kevin Donnelly <kevin dotmon com>]

On 2 May, following up some points Telsa had raised about the status of the 
words in Y Temiadur, and after the request not to link to 
www.melin.bangor.ac.uk, I wrote to ACCAC asking them:
(a) to confirm that we had a right to use the Termiadur words;
(b) to consider open-sourcing Termiadur.

I have now received a reply from ACCAC, which in relation to (a) confirms, as 
expected, that anybody has a right to use the terms without ACCAC's 
permission, but not to reproduce the volume or the title.

In relation to (b), ACCAC takes the line that the terms are available free 
from www.melin.bangor.ac.uk, or available to buy on CD from Canolfan Bedwyr, 
and therefore that ACCAC sees no justification for releasing the material.

Pace whatever views I might have, based on previous lives, that this shows yet 
again that the public sector is the voluntary sector's mortal enemy, the main 
question is to decide now whether and how to pursue this.  

On (b), I have a couple of difficulties:
- www.melin.bangor.ac.uk has had a MS VBScript problem (...) for at least two 
months now, and is actually not available;
- when I linked to it, I was asked to remove the link, on the basis that this 
was a "private" resource (I don't know when this changed, if it has), which 
was why I wrote Omnivore;
- even if melin were a completely free resource, it is purely web-based, and 
cannot therefore be used for non-web purposes, eg packaged as a free 
dictionary rpm;
- the CD, apart from costing money, is presumably subject to some sort of 
copyright too, although (part of) the contents may come under (a) above;
- the melin address has not exactly been widely publicised;
- I am reluctant, as a taxpayer, to have to pay twice for the same thing - 
once to have it made, and once (or more?) to access it.

The two main options are: (1) to pursue this further, making the above points, 
and bring in some of our public representatives like AMs/MPs (which has the 
side-benefit of raising awareness about free software in general); (2) 
sidestep this by starting some sort of Free Welsh Dictionary project, along 
the lines of dmoz and the Open Encyclopaedia

Any views would be welcome.

Kevin



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