Re: License Islamic Holy material

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Meor Ridzuan Meor Yahaya <meor dot ridzuan at gmail dot com> wrote:
> >  1. Get someone (an author of a publication of some sort) to
> >     donate an electronic copy for open source consumption.
> >  2. Get a number of people to actually type-up the material
> >     (ie. start from zero).
> >  3. We cut-n-paste what is out there (from various websites)
> >     and have people validate its content either based on source
> >     and/or personal knowledge.
> 
> Actually, I was thinking of going with no 2. I think it is quite
> possible for someone with enough passion. I'm thinking along this
> line. Get a madrassa involve. Let their graduated students work on it
> (before they go on and work with someone else). Their teacher can
> review their work later. It probably won't cost that much.

Keep in mind that we're talking about thousands (ie. 1000s) of pages
here (in either English and/or Arabic) but if you think this is something
that can happen then by all means do please pursue it ASAP - Ibn Kathir
(the English abridged translated version) alone is 10 volumes with 600+
pages each. For now though (and since #2 will take years to complete),
does option #3 sound OK to people ?  Can I start harvesting this data ?
Can we have (or get) access to a few authorities out there to validate
the data not via certification or similar but by inspecting its contents
and noting that it looks correct/valid to them ?  Again I'm talking
Hadith and Tafsir only !

--- Abdalla Alothman <abdalla at pheye dot net> wrote:
> However, the problem is with character coding. Not all the symbols used
> in the 'uthmani standard are used in the Unicode character set. So we
> can wait, or we can use what's available. Of course another option would
> be to convince the Unicode people to add the missing symbols.

I, like Mohammed Yousif who was pursuing this to some degree (he's since
unfortunately vanished), fully agree that we should wholeheartedly pursue
the Unicode route to make sure that all the necessary characters are
included.  

Here is a document [1] that M.Yousif had put together, but unfortunately
this topic wasn't pursued (beyond various posts here arguing for the need
to use new/special display technology which IMHO doesn't address our
current needs) and nothing was accomplished.  Abdalla, do please look
it over and possibly start a new thread to address these (proper Unicode
inclusion is a _must_ else special font files (or applications) will
continue to be a needless necessity).  Do please see what needs to be
added and possibly put a list of the missing characters and some
usage/screenshot samples for us to seriously pursue this.

> If you have both texts available, you can either license them (which makes
> absolutely no sense and it is silly) or you can sign each text. You can't
> license if you don't have the text, and once you have the text you can
> sign it and use the sum to verify the text.

Not to cut this short, but we can certainly do both - the license might be
meaningless to some yet a deterrent to others as such it might have some
value given the proper restrictions are put in place (no harm done).  The
need to host and note various Hashes I think is a given on a per release
basis.

This thread was specifically started to address issues with Hadith and
Tafsir, any comments with regard to that topic (again note the options
listed above).

[1] http://www.arabeyes.org/~nadim/tmp/qu_prop.pdf

Salam.

 - Nadim


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