[sword-devel] Copyright and locked modules

[David's Mailing List and Spam Receiver]

On Thursday 08 January 2004 11:35 am, Barry Drake wrote:
> Hi there ........
> Our greatest need is for an agent who will handle licence and copyright
> fees.  The Sword Project cannot and will not offer this service.
> If someone has a not-for-profit firm or is willing to start one to handle
> transactions by Pay-Pal etc, then the Sword Project would be willing to
> support that person by supplying locked modules together with an
> unlock key if the copyright holder were willing for that to be done.  The
> Sword Project would make no charge, and would take no part in
> financial transactions either with the purchasor or the copyright holder.
> If someone is willing to undertake this task, we would be in the same
> position as are other Bible software suppliers: we would be able to offer
> licenced copyrighted versions and handle payments.  This would,
> without any doubt bring The Sword Project to the top of all, and I mean
> all, Bible software!

Wow, God still answers prayers I think. A couple of weeks ago, I felt like God 
had laid it upon my heart to do something very much like this. Except it 
wouldn't really be not-for-profit. But it would be close.

Basically my idea would be to distribute keys or whatever for OSIS modules at 
near cost to me. The reason I would charge near cost rather than at cost is 
that as a full time undergrad student my income is minimal and it would be 
very helpful for me to have a small supplement to my income. And after I 
graduate, I'm not certain what God wants me to do but I don't imagine it will 
pay me much money since, well, there are other things much more important to 
me than making money at whatever cost. So, having a tiny amount extra to help 
pay the bills certainly couldn't hurt. Especially with my student loans.

Now what I mean by near cost is that I charge a small amount more (probably 
like a dollar or two) than the copyright holder asks in royalties. For 
example, let's say that each unlock key for the Modern Translation A is a $20 
US royalty to the copyright holder, then I would charge $21-22 US. Making a 
dollar or two of my own. Now this small profit would get broken down 
something like this;

10% to my local church
5% to a ministry or possibly open source project that I would choose
2% to a fund so that I can have some discretion in pricing modules in the 
future or on a case-by-case basis (lower costs to churches, ministries, etc., 
possibly selling at a loss or paying the cost of the module totally if 
someone is in need, or other similar offers)

I would then get the remaining 83% which would probably go to pay taxes, 
bills, etc. And I would be more than willing to provide any sort of 
accountability that anybody wants as this isn't about making money, just a 
little bit of extra financial security.

I wanted to distribute OSIS module rights so that way someone isn't locked 
down into a particular program (even ours), and can use the module in any 
program that supports OSIS.

Now my only question is this, would there be a problem with my contributing 
code to the project if I do this? I'd like to eventually contribute some good 
map and chart code to the project and am working on some basic ideas for 
that.

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