[sword-devel] Cool idea: Commercial Linux /Windows Bible prog ram based on Sword

[Bob Pritchett]

I'm afraid I'm not in a position to give advice on approaching specific
organizations. 

I can say, however, that we have a full-time person who does nothing but
call on publishers, with three other people regularly involved. It's a lot
of work.

Did I ever mention that Logos was initially written to be a shareware
project? My partner and I wrote version 1.0 in our spare time and were going
to distribute it as shareware over BBS's, etc. (back in the pre-web days)

It was our inability to get licenses to copyrighted texts like the NIV, etc.
that compelled us to create a company, quit our jobs, and make a commercial
product.

So I'm very sympathetic to the problem you're facing with these texts and
publishers, but you can see what solution I chose to the problem. :-)

-- Bob


-----Original Message-----
From: Joachim Ansorg [mailto:jansorg@gmx.de]
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2001 6:41 AM
To: sword-devel@crosswire.org
Subject: Re: [sword-devel] Cool idea: Commercial Linux /Windows Bible
prog ram based on Sword


Hi!

Thank you very much for your eMail.

> For what it's worth, in my experience Bible societies aren't "profit"
> oriented. They're non-profit organizations. They do prefer, when they can,
> to get money for their copyrighted content rather than to give it away.
But
> I think the reasoning, when you understand it, is not as "greedy" as you
> might think.

Ok, I thought they are "greedy" because I had some correspondence with the 
German Bible Society ("Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft") to get permissions for 
the revised Luther Bible either for free or for some unlocking fee.
The insisted on the point, that they want only a pure Linux solution,
because 
their profit of Windows programs could be reduced by the Windows frontend of

Sword. They even disliked selling the modules.
I heard other Bible societies are more friendly, but our Bible society in 
Germany isn't very friendly.

I do not understand their points, because other Bible programs like OLB, 
Bible Works and (probably) Logos ;) do ship their texts together with their 
Windows software.

Could you please give us some advice, how we could convince the German Bible

Society to permit us to give te texts away for a "unlock fee"?
I think you have much experience in this area.

Again, I thank you for your eMail and explanations,

Joachim
-- 
Joachim Ansorg
BibleTime - www.bibletime.de - info@bibletime.de
BibleTime is an easy to use Bible study tool for KDE / Linux.