[sword-devel] BDB?

[Chris Little]

DM Smith wrote:
> Chris,
>    This is good to know. While it is a very old work, I think that if or 
> when one proceeds with the effort, it should be necessary to work from 
> something that clearly is not copyrighted (i.e. hard copy that is 
> sufficiently early enough) or we get permission from the current 
> copyright holder. As I understand the note in my hardcopy of BDB, there 
> are corrections to the original and given the date, the corrections 
> would be under copyright. Working from hard copy that is under copyright 
> without permission because most of it is beyond copyright seems to me to 
> put the burden on us to demonstrate that we did not violate the copyright.

A hardcopy from before 1920 would be best to use as a basis. The 
original printing was in 1906, so copies of that could be found in 
libraries.

>    Are you also saying/implying that the OLB module was obtained from 
> that which would not be under copyright? I imagine that we simply don't 
> know. As I have looked into the origins of other modules, it does not 
> seem clear what the origin was for most of them.

I don't know the source of the OLB text. What I'm saying is that the OLB 
text has been HEAVILY edited. Now that I look at a copy of the real BDB 
text, I see there's very little resemblance between the two, the OLB 
version being highly abridged.

>    I am then wondering why Naves is online. According to nave.doc that 
> is part of the module, it taken from a particularly buggy etext and was 
> fixed to be 99% correct. As I have obtained the original of the fixed 
> etext and am working on converting it into OSIS, I am concerned that it 
> will be unacceptable as it is from an etext which may not be the same as 
> the original. Any advise? (Obviously from my other posts, I am adverse 
> to copyright infringement and if I cannot be sure that I am working with 
> PD, I will do something else.)

I wouldn't worry about that. If you haven't put a lot of work into the 
Nave's text already, you might consider using the version CCEL released 
recently as a base: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/nave/bible.html. It's based 
on the same text files, but their ThML edition has all cross-references 
marked.

--Chris