[sword-devel] Bereans and Sword and GPL vs PD [uncle ... LcdBible is now GPL licensed]

[David's Mailing List and Spam Receiver]

On Monday 15 December 2003 12:53 pm, Lynn Allan wrote:
> The LcdBible software is now licensed as GPL on sourceforge.net.
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/lcdbible
>
> I believe it was *almost* eligible to be a "Sword-frontend" because it uses
> the sword-api to access verses from ./sword/modules/texts/rawtext/*.*
> (actually an "experimental plug-in subset" that I am optimistic will be
> accepted for CVS as supported class CanonVersifier)
>
> I believe its GPL license now makes it eligible to apply for being a
> "Sword-frontend".

Ok, now I'm going to try my hand at explaining how this work. Sword front-end 
status has nothing to do with your code being GPL or not. Let's say I write a 
little web script using the sword php bindings this script must be GPL 
because it linkes to the sword project. Certainly this little webscript that 
may even just grab one verse or be one line long is not anywhere near a 
front-end.

> I am not clear what it means to "mention crosswire as the copyright
> holder". I would appreciate clarification. What rights, if any, do I
> retain? What rights, if any, do I forfeit?

Technically you keep all rights. The only rights you lose by making your 
software GPL are the ability to prevent other people from modifying your work 
with making those changes GPL and the ability to not make that source code 
available. If you decide you don't want the project to be GPL anymore you 
must take any and all code that you don't have copyright on (which is only 
the stuff you write unless you have people give you copyright to their stuff 
or you have permission) and you can then change the license. This does not 
however change the GPL status of the previous code.

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