[sword-devel] Re: Applying for copyright maintainer - cease and desist Re:

[Chris Little]

Don Parris wrote:
> ---------- Original Message -------------
> Subject: Re: Applying for copyright maintainer - cease and desist Re:
> 	[sword-devel] One thing That I would like to see...
> Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 20:09:44 -0500
> From: "Bryan L. Fordham" <bfordham at socialistsushi.com>
> To: Sword Dev <sword-devel at crosswire.org>
> 
> 
> Daniel Glassey wrote:
> 
> 
>>If you have $10,000 and can guarrantee royalties then they may discuss
>>it with you - that is what Zondervan require. afaik Zondervan sell their
>>own software with the NIV so I don't think they will sell a sword module
>>themselves. There are more translations than the NIV so if Zondervan
>>don't want to distribute it for our software that is their choice. I
>>know there are commercial bible software people (Hi guys :) ) on this
>>list and afaiu they haven't had it easy dealing with Zondervan, so don't
>>feel too bad that we aren't going to get the NIV.
> 
> I purchased the NIV and the NASB for use with The On-Line Bible for Windows a few years ago.  Since I no longer run Windows, it does me no good.  I do value the NIV tremendously, and cannot imagine why they would not make it available to us, if they made it available to the On-Line Bible and others.  In my own estimate, such behavior is discriminatory and counter-productive for them.  Of course, that's my own opinion.

I don't believe it is an issue of discrimination. (It might be if they 
are trying not to add new licensees because they want to push their own 
software, which I do not know to be the case. But I think your 
suggestion here is that they are showing preferential treatment to other 
outside vendors, e.g. OLB, so that's a different issue.) The problem 
isn't that they would make CrossWire meet different standards from OLB 
or Logos or BibleWorks or whatever. The problem is that we don't have 
the facilities to meet the monetary & accounting requirements that they 
have for all vendors. (I do acknowledge that Zondervan might have 
differing licensing practices for different vendors; I'm just trying to 
say that I don't think we could meet the requirements that we have been 
told in the past exist.) Furthermore, it's a free country (I use that in 
the rhetorical idiomatic sense and do not mean to falsely imply that 
this applies only to Americans or that radical right-wing America is in 
fact "free" by, say, 1789's standards) and Zondervan is free to 
discriminate all they want, with regard to whom they choose to do 
business with.

> I would like to ask if the NASB is actually going to be available soon?  I know that when I sumbitted an e-mail to their copyright office (early last year), I was informed that they had already agreed to make it available.  I saw some posts about the NASB module, but don't know if that pertains to the developers getting it ready for release.

Gosh, we hope so. :) We need to get version 1.5.8 of the library 
released, then BibleCS 1.5.8, since they are going to be needed for the 
NASB. I'm supposed to finish up the NASB lexicons, and I should really 
take a day off from writing my thesis to do this--maybe this weekend. I 
think the NASB itself is finished and ready for sale as soon as all of 
the other parts are ready.

--Chris