[sword-devel] Open Content Creation

[Jonathan Hughes]

Hello Everyone,

    Wow, all this discussion. I just wanted to add my couple of thoughts. (I
only have a finite amount of them! ;) ) I believe that an open content
license would be a great idea, I love the idea of being able to distribute a
'work' and give people the ability to use it without worrying about getting
my permission. In fact I am going to go into the Christian content business
in the future, and everything that I and my company does will be distributed
under an open content license.
    But this would only help us, as the Sword Project team, for future works
or works that we could get people to license under an open content type of a
license. For all the translations, etc. that people already use and are not
under this type of license and would probably never be under the open
content umbrella, we need to do something else to get those works
distributed. In copyright law all we need to do is get the copyright holder
to grant permission for us to distribute their work(s). That is what I am
doing, it would be great to have a translation that was open content or a
commentary that is open content, if they were the caliber of the NIV, NKJV
and what we have now. So this is where we are at and that is what I am
doing, trying to get things distributed under the 'license' it is under now
and that is just copyright law (I know copyright is probably not a license
but you understand the analogy.) It will be interesting to see the reaction
from publishers when I start sending out official letters this spring, I am
sure we will be surprised to see what happens. With that in mind what do
people think of the official letter I plan to send? Check it out at the
Copyright Website: http://www.crosswire.org/sword/copyright/  I have not had
any feedback about it! And whoever made the comment about how we need to
make module making easy, amen to that! Maybe some documentation or simple
tools to be used.

In Christ,
Jonathan
jhughes@crosswire.org


----- Original Message -----
From: "Don A. Elbourne Jr." <delbourne@home.com>
To: <sword-devel@crosswire.org>
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2001 10:34 AM
Subject: [sword-devel] Open Content Creation


> I'd like to come at the copyright issue from a little different angle.
With
> all due respect to Jonathan and his "Copyright Battle," it is going to be
> very difficult to convince publishers to give away the material that puts
> food on their table. Instead, why not begin an open content creation
> initiative?
>
> There are a few things to consider before circumventing the traditional
> publication process. For those interested I'd recommend reading a very
> interesting article, "Publishers: Who Needs Them?" by David J. A. Clines
> http://www.shef.ac.uk/~biblst/DJACcurrres/Publishers.html
>
> I'd be interested to hear what others think. Instead of trying to wrestle
> copyrights out of the clinched fists of those "rotten, no-good, selfish,
> greedy, heartless, un-Christ-like, publishers" why not just create content
> ourselves? What would be the barriers to such a project? what should the
> goals be? What type of content should be created?
>
> Any feedback is welcome.
>
>
>
> Don A. Elbourne Jr.
> http://elbourne.org