[Fwd: [sword-devel] FACTS]

[Chris Little]

On Sun, 5 Jan 2003, Jerry Hastings wrote:

> At 04:15 PM 1/5/2003 -0700, Troy A. Griffitts wrote:
> >...I've never heard of Larry Nelson or Sulu Kelly. ...
> 
> Larry Nelson did the Jewish Bible (JPS 1917).

On the issue of Larry Nelson--good guy.  He did a bunch of modules for 
OLB, like the JPS 1917, Roderham, LXXE (Brenton), Lamsa, etc.  We took all 
of his works straight from OLB (except LXXE & Lamsa).  We also got 
permission from him.  Larry Pierce has nothing to do with this and can 
stuff it.

I have email correspondence with him somewhere (but am not going to dig it 
up).

> Sulu Kelly did something with John Wesley's notes.
> 
> Both of these guys seem to think they get a copyright for being first to 
> put these PD works into electronic form.

Of course, this is also right, for which reason I mostly cared about 
getting Larry Nelson's permission because he is a nice guy doing good work 
and I think he deserves thanks and appreciation.

Most people think they get copyright for putting PD works into electronic
form and many commercial products (e.g. BibleWorks, possibly Logos?) pay
them lip service and give them royalties.  I think that kind of feeds the 
problem rather than solving it.

For the record: the only thinks Larry Pierce could reasonably have a claim 
on are:

1) KJV+strongs (he created it, but it's not really a creative work thus
not genuinely copyrightable)

2) BDB/Thayer (he calls them something else I think; these are probably
from Larry--BibleWorks asserts as such, though the webpage where these
came from probably said they were PD; his additions apparently include the
TWOT/TDNT/KJV counts and we will happily remove them)

3) "TVM" (this is a part of his BDB/Thayer correlates that was removed
before we got text files--I assume he really created this, but it's just
an enumerated list of tense/voice/mood combinations so it's not
creative/copyrightable; it is similar to the Robinson & Packard modules 
that I made--but had no delusions of being able to claim a copyright on)

4) numerous other modules that may have his _creative_ editing to modify
their doctrine (we would LOVE to fix these)



Nothing ever came from any OLB CDs that I know of.  He does post 
everything I know of on their websites.

--Chris