[sword-devel] Re: Importing from biblegateway.com

[Jack Lewis]

>b) The HTML2Sword Module code is distributed under the GNU 
>GPL.
>
>c) The e-Sword license prohibits reverse engineering. I wouldn't be
>surprised if Rick considered an e-Sword2Sword Project tool to be
>reverse engineering, and a violation of the e-Sword license.
>
>All of which is a roundabout way of saying you are much safer legally,
>in creating a tool that ignores the existence of e-Sword.

Disclaimer: IANAL.

Reverse engeering for compatability is legal in the United States and
Europe.  Examples include Samba, WINE, Accolade vs. Sega, Linux (from
UNIX), Kaffe (from Java).  Here is some info:

http://www.chillingeffects.org/reverse/faq.cgi#QID195

I don't see how the GNU GPL has any bearing on this issue.

It would be legal to develop and distribute a tool that converts the
e-Sword NIV text to the SWORD format, and it would be legal to use the
data, but it would probably not be legal to re-distribute the NIV
data.  For copyrighted and restricted texts like the NIV, the tool
would be less useful.