amsler@MOUTON.ARPA (Robert Amsler at mouton.ARPA) (03/07/86)
The latest information I have re: Wang's Lexical resources is that they want a $10,000 one time fee plus $1,000/year per resource. For that kind of money I thought there should be some sort of update/maintenance, but apparently they are selling them as is with no support and little documentation. Houghton-Mifflin apparently also sells access to machine-readable dictionaries and they appear to offer professional support for updating them tied to their routine dictionary production. If applications are academic non-profit use, the recommended source would be the Oxford Archive in England. They distribute several sources at the cost of making the tape copies. Generally, the commercial sources offering dictionaries for free have dried up. It is a business now. One might be able to strike a deal with some publisher, but ``free'' access is becoming increasingly rare if the intended use is commercial development.