[sword-devel] Copyright Scripture distribution

[Eric Krohn]

You write:
>What most mystifies me about the IBS stance on electronic Scripture
>distribution is that they are not trying to protect their own profits. That I
>could understand.  If they are allowing free downloads of the texts from their
>site, how does it hurt them if I redistribute those texts for free?

A possible approach was used at one point by Debian Linux for certain
free-but-not-redistributable software packages (I think it was some subset
of Netscape Navigator, Acrobat Reader, and/or RealAudio player).  The
(small) Debian package did the installation, but worked with a copy of the
vendor's package that you had to download yourself.

It may be that some sort of wrapper could be made to allow some of these
free-for-downloading but not free-for-redistribution translations available
to a Sword installation.  Of course, that may require changing the format
of the downloaded translation and that change may run amuck of copyright.

--
Eric Krohn