[sword-devel] Open Content Creation

[Will]

The whole open content question, and Joachim and Malbisse's messages,
suggested
some things to me.

What about getting volunteers to translate some of the commentaries and
other
material that is PD and available at CCEL and similar sites?  Putting that
material
into German, French, Spanish, etc. would be a tremendous service, and it
would
not be "Tom, Dick or Harry" content.  I'm not certain if this would work,
but I
wonder if running a page or two through one of the machine translation
services
on the Net would produce a good "jumping-off" point.  Someone who knows the
language could then go over it, polish it somewhat, add or correct specific
theological
terms, and pass the rough translation on to a native speaker of that
language.

That might take a lot of the brute force work out of translating it, and set
up a sort
of international assembly line.  Any thoughts.

Also, I wonder if Malbisse's suggestion could be carried out.  There must be
a lot of
theology professors out there with unpublished manuscripts, class notes,
etc. that will
never see print for profit.  What about contacting a few people and seeing
if they want
to contribute to a world-wide open source library?

Also, Jonathan, I agree with you on the problem of existing works that are
not open
content and unlikely to be so.  But I also was wondering about another
approach to
these publishers.  What about all of the back-listed books that they hold
copyright on
but are never likely to re-issue for various reasons?  Might some of the
publishers be
willing to work with the Sword Project on permission to use these more dated
works,
even when they are unwilling to license use of their latest projects?

Just a few more thoughts.

Will