[sword-devel] For ALL On The List: Copyright Considerations, What do you think?

[Jerry Hastings]

At 10:46 PM 1/9/2003 +0000, Jonathan Hughes wrote:
>.... A good SOLUTION to this would be to add the
>distributionlicense and distributionnotes fields from the .conf files to
>be displayed with the other module information in ModInfo.jsp. This way
>anyone that downloads the modules from the info page can see the
>specific license that govern their usage ...

I think it may be wise to keep modules of a number of types of licenses off 
the CDs and images. One type I would keep off is anything that is for 
non-commercial use. "Non-commercial" means different things to different 
people. I don't know if there is a definite legal meaning for it. If there 
is, it would be good to find out what it is. I do know that some people 
mean you can not ask for even one cent, not for postage, handling or other 
costs, or even donations, for a CD, if their "non-commercial" licensed work 
is on the CD. Others simply mean you can't charge anything above the 
material costs plus S&H.  (I wonder if this distinction is part of current 
events).

I would keep any modules that can't be used by anybody, under any 
circumstance off the CD. Modules that are kept off the CD could still be 
downloaded from the web site. This way nobody has to worry about what they 
do with the modules on the CDs. If a church gets a CD no one has to be 
concerned if they want to make a bunch of copies and use them at a fund 
raiser or sell them in their book store.

This would also be an incentive to have modules produced that are free from 
restrictions. I think the KJV2003 project shows that people will help 
produce better texts for the modules. I wonder how many people would 
volunteer to work on texts that didn't require a knowledge of Greek or Hebrew.

If these things can't be done today, perhaps they are things that should be 
aimed for.

Jerry