Dr. Lance Cousins' renponse

[Muneo Tokunaga]

 Dear Dr. Lance Cousins,
  
   Thank you for your kind comment on the trouble I am now in. My answer to your mail to me is as follows. 

   The first point is that Dr. John Smith criticizes my files, (intentionally?) misunderstanding the main objective of my files. Anyone who looks at my files, I suppose, can easily understand that I made an utmost effort to make the files usable as a word-finder of the printed text not as a replacement of the latter. What offended me is that Dr. Smith seems to criticize this point knowingly in order to justify his publication. He should have been more sincere to say that my files are OK as a word-finder although still many typing errors remain but that he wants to produce a literally `Machine-readable Mahaabhaarata' from my files. Then his remakrs on his homepage was not so surprising to me.

> We all understood that these files had been made public domain. If that is
> not the case, then why put them on the Net ? If John Smith is mistaken
> here, he is certainly not the only one.

I have told in my previous mail (through Prof. Michio Yano) why I put them on the Net. Am I wrong to think that anyone is free to revised someone else's files for his pursonal use, but that it is an etiquette at least to inform the original producer of his revision of the files if one produces his files and make them PUBLIC as his own on the Internet? 
  I openend my files as an incentive to others who keep personal Sanskrit files by their side. Without letting them open their files, our grobal library of Sanskrit files will never be achieved. Reading your mail, I am afraid, many owners of such files will become hesitant in opening their files (as long as a minimun of the etiquette is observed). I myself is reconsidering about the publication of my files and future revisions. 

 


                         ===============================================
                                   Muneo TOKUNAGA ($BFA1J=!M:(B)
                                 Professor of Indian Philosophy 
                           Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University
                             Kyoto, Japan (606-01). Tel. 075-753-2778
                             email: g53772 at sakura.kudpc.kyoto-u.ac.jp
                         ===============================================