A call for open source DTDs

[david at megginson.com]

Peter Murray-Rust writes:

 > IMO public domain is not appropriate. Very few documents are
 > actually in the public domain - most have some sort of
 > protection. My understanding is that anyone can take a PD document,
 > modify it *** and then copyright it***.  This could mean that the
 > original authors could be prevented from using their own work.

The company can copyright its changes, but the original work remains
in the public domain.  This kind of thing happened with TeX, but it
never really did much damage.

For example, the medieval poem BEOWULF and the novels of Charles
Dickens are all in the public domain.  Many authors and publishers
have copyrighted specific editions of them, but the core texts
themselves remain free.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david at megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/

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