[jsword-devel] Distribute Bible Texts

[Jonathan Morgan]

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 11:06 PM, DM Smith <dmsmith555 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Tonny Kohar wrote:
>  > Hi,
>  >
>  > Is it allowed to distribute some bible texts or commentaries, etc with
>  > the program installer ?
>  >
>  > As you probably know, I am creating alternative GUI front end for
>  > JSword project and thinking a possibility of distributing some bible
>  > text with the program installer, so end user could start
>  > exploring/study bible when the program start. If he/she need more
>  > books then he/she could download additional books from the known site
>  > eg; crosswire module addins.
>  >
>  > The purpose or intent is to distribute some books (not all), so the
>  > user does not represented with empty screen because no books
>  > available.
>  In addition to what Peter said:
>  The typical bundle is KJV, Robinsons, Strong's Greek, and Strong's
>  Hebrew. This provides the user the richest study opportunity as the KJV
>  is keyed to Strong's Numbers and Morphology. These are all free to
>  distribute.

It depends on who your target is.  This may be a "typical" bundle for
those interested in original language studies.  It is certainly not
appropriate as a typical bundle for those who just want to read the
Bible.  And this is why it is often a bad idea distributing any
modules at all: most of the things that you distribute will be wrong
for more users than they will be right, IMHO.

The typical bundle I would use would be the ESV, the ISBE, and the
TSK.  They are certainly not the only things you could use (and they
are not the only modules I have installed), but I personally find that
the ESV is the best bible available for ordinary reading, the ISBE the
best disctionary, and the TSK the best commentary (largely because it
isn't a commentary, just collections of related verses which you then
have to interpret as you see fit, rather than reading through pages of
some other scholars opinion trying to find what information is useful
to you).

Jon