Oh, and here’s another little detail. I’ve suggested that PG itself get ownership of the trademark, so that when Michael dies (hopefully not soon!) there won’t be complications for the group.

By “group,” incidentally, I mean the wonderful nonprofit PG–rather than the problematic offshoots, or whatever they are, that have popped up. What about the truth behind domains such as gutenberg.com, now owned by marketer Chris Andrews, who, at least for now, is using Hawaii John’s favorite layout? How about the question of an Andrews-HJ relationship? Or one with Michael Hart? Were trademark-related permissions given? The terms?

As for DP, I’ve suggested that it get a seat on the PG board. So what’s the problem? DP is the largest contributor of e-texts for PG.

The frustration is that I’d LOVE to see PG get some nice funding for digitization of e-books. If PGLAF owned the trademark, that would be simpler. A board with DP’s Juliet Sutherland or Charles Franks and other e-book people on it would help as well. I’ve got a pretty busy life and am NOT campaigning for the PG board. Is someone else, however, campaigning to keep the board in the hands of Michael’s Illinois friends rather than involving the likes of Juliet and Charles? Your comments suggest an agenda, to phrase things politely.

Note: Juliet and Charles are innocent–I’m making the board-related recommendation without their asking me to. Nor have they suggested my posts on the trademark issue.

Thanks,
David

Why are you so obsessed with taking ownership of PG’s trademark, and keep mentioning what happens when he dies, and suggesting that he should retire. I just found hundreds of different postings you have made talking about who should inherent the PG trademark. Do you think you are entitled to it? You keep mentioning that DP should have it. Could you clarify your relationship with DP. I assume that you are involved with DP in some capacity. It sounds to us readers like you feel you should have it. Could you clairify to us your qualifications for manager of the PG trademark. If DP was able to get it what would they do with it? Do you and DP want to market it differently?

All I can say is, it is most disrespectful to PG and all of the PG volunteers that you, who has done little, if nothing, to help PG, would posture yourself is such a way to say you could do it better – while offering sleazy criticism and no substantial suggestions.

No, we are not trying to take over PG, as if we could (PG was deaf for our original pleas for major reforms)! We are busy enough with our own library project and wish PG all kinds of luck. In fact, we’ll look forward to using PG/DP’s public domain texts for our project, just so they’re in compliance with DP and library standards. Beyond that, I want to see PG thrive as a way for ordinary folks to get their favorite books online without having to deal with publishers or librarycrats.

The people I’d most like to see on the PG board would be Distributed Proofreaders along with especially outstanding PG contributors. If, however, I were on the board, I’d insist on organizational ownership of the trademark so it would be easier to raise money and properly compensate the guys who most deserve it–Michael and Greg Newby, his executive director.

Despite my disagreements with Michael on the trademark and some other issues, I believe he deserves decent pay and a comfortable old age. Organzational ownership of the trademark would make it easier to raise money for PG and accomplish those objectives.

The oddities with the PG/WEBL association (whatever that association is) include:

• PG has always been focused on easy to access and repurpose digital texts, while WEBL, with PDF, is the “anti-PG” (this is Lee’s point.)

• Feedback I’ve received is that a large number of the WEBL books are not books as we know them, and there are many duplicates — we have severe “count inflation.”

• Related to count inflation, why this over-obsession with the number of books?

• The overall fuzziness of the exact relationship between PG and WEBL.

• The unusualness of Michael Hart’s press release not being posted to the Project Gutenberg volunteer’s list, gutvol-d.

Comments on the above points? Am I offbase?

And has anyone reading this paid for a WEBL membership? For a site claiming the moon, they certainly are operating outside the radar of the ebook mainstream.

“To address these common format limitations, the World eBook Library uses the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) . . .”

So to solve the problem of a page-oriented format and being unable to change the presentation, they’ve selected a format that is page-oriented and doesn’t allow you to change the presentation or font size.

What’s wrong with this picture?

OpenReader anyone?