Re: GNU Free Database License

[Merijn de Weerd]

On 2006-09-17, Alfred M. Szmidt <ams@gnu.org> wrote:
>    Well, if you want to call the OED and M-W a "word encyclopedia" and
>    not a dictionary, I guess we are on the same page. OED entries are
>    copyrighted, the short phrases from a "simple dictionary" are not.
>
> You are again implying that longer phrases, for example several
> entries, would be copyrighted.  I.e that size does infact matter,
> while just above you say that it doesn't.

There's no necessary condition of size. Like I said, a haiku is
copyrighted but a big phone book is not. What matters is the
creativity you put into it. But it's a nice yardstick: long texts
are hard to produce without any creativity, so we can presume
that a long text is creative. See it as a heuristic if you want.

Anyway, I really need to get some sleep now, so I'm done here.

Merijn

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