permission refusals (was: [sword-devel] The Message)

[Chris Little]

I don't know the specific circumstances of many of the requests, but there 
are many reasons why we might receive a refusal, including:

Requests to give texts away that the publishers still want to sell (we
are, of course, open to publishers selling texts, but not all requests may
state this, especially unofficial inquiries).

Exclusive contracts with other software publishers or plans to market 
their own software bundles.

Uncertainty about our protection scheme (Troy & I talked about this a 
couple days ago and he convinced me that cracking our protection is quite 
intractable--so that's not a valid criticism).

Our insignificant market share (bad argument; growing badder daily).

These are some of the most obvious, off the top of my head.  Honestly, I
wouldn't worry too much about the failures and the refusals.  I think we
have roughly the third greatest number of texts available in a Bible
software package, after STEP and Logos.  We're starting to see some 
interest from publishers in selling texts & Sword itself, and after the 
first few early adopters, I believe we will see others follow.

--Chris



On Sun, 20 Apr 2003, David Burry wrote:

> Wow so many refusals!  Is there anyone who knows for sure why any of these
> guys are refusing?  I'm not really looking to open up a conversation about
> how evil many people are, I'm looking for actual factual knowledge of real
> publishers' reasons for refusal.  I'm asking because I want to know if there
> are issues we can address lessen the refusals.  (notice how I'm refraining
> from suggesting possible reasons because I don't have actual factual
> knowledge of real publishers' reasons, please others do the same, I know
> this can get pretty rowdy in here on this subject with how annoying these
> refusals are that's why I'm mentioning this caution)