Re: GNU Free Database License

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > That is a bit more than a dictionary, atleast compared to what my
   > dictionary (Concise English Dictionary) contains.  Which is looks like
   > the following:

   I guess I was spoiled, I only have big dictionaries. :)

My "small" dictionary has serve me well over many many years.  Though
I wouldn't mind to have a copy of OED, the etymology listings in there
is juse wonderful.

   I'm not sure what you mean by "presented", but M-W has a copyright
   on its particular entry for "hello". The above from your CED is too
   short to be creative, so it's not copyrighted. But I would not call
   M-W's text a "presentation".

What if my CED contains "over 30,000 entries" like that?  Would that
in your opinion be copyrightable?  I don't think it would.

   To me "presentation" means things like the font, whitespace,
   arranging entries and so on.

Then we have the same definition of the word.  

As I already noted, M-W and OED are not what I would call dictionaries
in the normal sense, but something like "word encyclopedias", or
something since they contain far more than definitions for words.
They contain examples of usage, and that requires some creativity
(specially with the more obscure words)...