[sword-devel] Is sword going non-gpl or proprietory?

[Glenn Reed]

Hi,

Thanks for clearing that up for me.  Well making it a little clearer anyway.

> Well, first, there are no plans to license as anything other than GPL.
> Second, there has never been any suggestion that we go to any license that
> is not open-source except by those who see this as a way of convincing
> copyright holders that Sword is secure.

You mention that there are some that suggest closed source as a means of 
getting the copyright holders on board.  Has this line been suggested by some 
of the bible societies or by members of sword who have speculated that the 
attitude of bible societies might change "if ...... " ?

If access to the source code is guaranteed then I guess this is a non-issue.  
I would hate to see this project hijacked by commercial interests.

What does surprise me is the "apparent" attitude of the bible societies 
towards this project.  At least from the (very) short time I have been 
following the issues surrounding this.  It seems that certain copyright 
modules are locked but more to the point that there is no way to purchase the 
keys for these locked modules??  That there is this great distrust between 
the bible societies and sword.  To put it bluntly I am astonished that the 
bible societies want to put a stumbling block towards the spreading of the 
gospel.  Does anyone know how long active lobbying of the bible societies has 
been happening?  And why it seems that so few of them have been willing to 
alter thier positiion???

And perhaps as a corollary to the above issue, how will I as a developer get 
access to the locked modules.  Also will any translation I contribute to 
sword, such as CLV, simply disappear into a void?

Glenn Reed.

On Monday 09 September 2002 04:13 pm, you wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Sep 2002, Glenn Reed wrote:
> > I read this from the mailing list.
> >
> > > > First it is GPL--this is
> > > > the last GPL component in the library.  If it were replaced with
> > > > something else, we could license Sword under non-GPL licenses to
> > > > other entities (e.g. Bible societies that don't want to deal with
> > > > GPL's restrictions) or put it out publicly under a license that we
> > > > write that better meets our needs than the GPL.
> >
> > My feeling is that the great advantage of sword is that it is GPL.  If it
> > ever went closed source (perhaps due to pressure from certain bible
> > societies??) I would be forced to pursue other options :(
> >
<snip>
>
> Just to re-iterate, we're not going closed source.
>
> --Chris