there is a large inheritage of great music that is already in the public
domain. LilyPond would be a great contender for maintaining publically
accessible databases of importance. What is needed for that is a
robustness in the sources:
a) getting serious quality without version-specific tweaks
b) a dependable upgrade plan when LilyPond advances
c) good conversion to MusicXML
d) possibly also good import
e) good human readability in case machine translation fails for some
reason
f) reasonably easy machine readability outside of LilyPond
Maintaining a cultural database in proprietary formats like Finale is a
recipe for trouble: if at one point company or format or compatibility
fail, the content becomes inaccessible. This is a big selling point for
LilyPond, and if it makes progress in some other areas, it will become
interesting for this sort of task also outside of the public domain
area. If it becomes commercially viable to reissue classics using a
public LilyPond database as a starting point, there will be a sizable
market for LilyPond skills.
But I don't see us there yet, and a good part of my focus is on work
leading there.