[sword-devel] e-Sword collaboration & other copyright matters

[Chris Little]

> some of our leverage as being a free, non-commercial and OPEN SOURCE
> software package would be taken away.

I don't think being Open Source is much of a selling point to publishers.
See Bob Pritchett from Logos' comments in the bible-linux egroups list on
the subject.  Generally, they're afraid of someone cracking the software and
stealing their stuff.  There's some logic to it, since someone with an
unlocked module could essentially do anything with that module, like print,
publish online, etc.  Amusingly, I'd say we still have much stronger
protection than most closed-source, even commercial products.  With SWORD,
you definitely have to have a decrypt key for every query.  Logos, on the
other hand, just keeps track of which books you have unlocked and stores it
in a file.  In other words, nothing is even encrypted, so you can pretty
easily share your unlock cache file or crack the program itself to ignore
the unlock checks.  I think most publishers can be categorized as
Pointy-Haired Bosses, though, so closed-source indicates greater security to
them, even in cases where it shouldn't.  *sigh*

> P.S. What were Rick's reason to not join forces with us in way of
> developing a Windows frontend and using the Sword API?

He gave none.  He didn't even say he wouldn't be interested.  We just
stopped corresponding, which I interpret to mean that he wasn't interested
(at least at the moment) in doing a SWORD front-end.  This may be, in part,
due to his use of VB, so we might be able to talk him into using SWORD once
a new SWORD dll or ActiveX control is released.

--Chris