emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) (06/21/91)
On the legal side, my understanding is that the copyright notice would not be worth anything (though probably also not worth anybody's while to challenge). Essentially what you are doing is "cataloging" rather than "compilation". The actual process is much more akin to compilation than to cataloging; I'm not just blindly reposting whatever it is that my search software presents to me, more like 10% of it. No doubt there's room for improvement on that score; still, given the amount of effort that I put in to decide what to post and what not to post falls within the realm of compilation as well as cataloging. I saved about 1000 rejects from over the course of a week's work, that should be adequate to argue the case. Although it is irrelevant, I would add that in my opinion the policy in favour of publicly funded cataloging rather than copyrighted cataloging is a sound one, and indeed almost a necessity given the nature of cataloging. Look to the library system for support and funding. I believe it is not only authorized, but legally obliged to provide the cataloging needed. I'm not aware of any libraries undertaking any massive software cataloging efforts, not on the scale of a dozen new entries or updates daily. I'd be perfectly happy if the opportunity came along to do this work and have the results be both high quality and freely available; can't say that there are any existing library models to go on that adequately suit the task. -- Edward Vielmetti, moderator, comp.archives, emv@msen.com "(6) The Plan shall identify how agencies and departments can collaborate to ... expand efforts to improve, document, and evaluate unclassified public-domain software developed by federally-funded researchers and other software, including federally-funded educational and training software; " "High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, S. 272"