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

[Chris Little]

Lynn Allan wrote:
> The LcdBible software is now licensed as GPL on sourceforge.net.
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/lcdbible

Looks good.  Thanks, Lynn.

> 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".

Just to be clear, there's no official Sword frontend status.  Just let 
us know when you think the project is at a reasonably feature-complete 
state and and you think it's ready for public consumption.  Then we'll 
go through the webpages and place the appropriate links.  Something you 
would label a 1.0 release might be a good milestone to have in mind, but 
it doesn't necessarily need to be a 1.0.

Anyway, at the moment, I would not consider LcdBible a Sword frontend 
because it doesn't really use Sword, it just uses some Sword code. 
Unenciphered RawText Bibles are a vanishing breed.  Everything new will 
be released as zText.  And any time an old Bible is updated, it will be 
released as zText, with the old version being removed.  Additionally, as 
Troy mentioned, NASB95 is coming.  That means the cipher code is really 
a necessity.  (We don't want people buying the NASB and then finding out 
that the frontend they intended to use it with doesn't actually support 
it.  This might constitute a good reason to actually establish a 
frontend certification process.)

The other thing is that it would be *nice* if LcdBible could handle 
stuff other than Bibles.  Even if you don't want to add new interface 
components to handle LD & GenBook modules, you should still provide for 
commentaries since they require a negligible amount of additional code. 
  (If commentaries are already handled, you can ignore this.)

> 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?

As David said, you keep the copyright on LcdBible.  CrossWire just owns 
the copyright on Sword code.  I think Martin was talking about putting 
copyright attributions on that Sword code.  I don't know how 
consistently we have done this ourselves with our own code.  Mentioning 
CrossWire/The SWORD Project in any documentation or about pages would be 
a nice courtesy, but I don't think it's obligatory.  Something like what 
the (original) BSD advertising clause required is definitely NOT 
required of GPL.

--Chris