Lexicon Urthus

Maru Dubshinki · 21 Jul 2005, 21:11 · from 2005-July.txt.gz

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From: marudubshinki at gmail.com (Maru Dubshinki)
Date: Thu Jul 21 21:11:18 2005
Subject: (urth) Lexicon Urthus
Message-ID: <f5238c3050721205475794de at mail.gmail.com>

What is the status of Michael "mantis" Andre-Driussi's ''Lexicon Urthus''? 

Does anyone know?  Sirius Fiction has it listed as AWOL- no copies
left, no fixed or second editions planned, and no second printing ever
planned.  Ebay hosts one copy (for a absolute minimum of a cool 105
US$) , Abebooks demanding 150 $US, and Amazon (as many of us know) has
one reseller offering it at an exorbitant price.  In short, ''Lexicon
Urthus'', with its narrow, deep focus, aimed at a narrow audience
(itself selected out of a narrow audience!) appears as dead as a
doorknob commercially, and Andre-Driussi appears to have moved on; in
essence abandonware, or somewhat like an orphaned work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphaned_works

Now, what interests me here is not that I won't be able to get a copy
(unless someone has tired of theirs), but rather the long-discussed
FAQ for this list. Seems to me that LU could be a pretty good basis
for it- would dispose of the entire genre of vocab -based questions at
a shot (once corrected, that is).  But there is the problem of
copyright. (Drat! You knew there was a catch!).

I was not active on this list when mantis was, nor have my occasional
trawls through the archive (is it just me, or are the archive digests
broken? http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v212.shtml gives me a 404.)
really revealed much of mants' personality to me.
Is it within the realm of possibility that he might release LU under
the GNU Free Documentation License:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

or possibly a Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org/

license such as this one:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
(non-commercial, share-alike, generic jurisdiction)

or this one:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
(Allow commercial, share, generic jurisdiction)

Or, god willing, public domain?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain

So what do y'all think? Is this worth pursuing?

~Maru

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