[sword-devel] news/crosswire organization

[DM Smith]

Chris Little wrote:
> Peter von Kaehne wrote:
>   
>> Chris Little wrote:
>>     
>>> I don't think 
>>> the news section belongs within the CrossWire site as opposed to the 
>>> Sword site (but we can discuss that in IRC). 
>>>       
>> Strongly disagree - the news content goes already way beyond Sword,
>> includes Jsword, various front ends and more. Option one would be to
>> narrow it down to SWORD proper or option two - more naturally - is to
>> move it to CW and open it up a bit.
>>     
>
> I disagree entirely.
>
> My take on the news is actually that it is roughly 95% The SWORD Project 
> news and approximately 5% other news (site news, FlashCards news, etc.).
>
> My take on CrossWire is that it basically consists of The SWORD Project, 
> FlashCards, (maybe) JSword, and hopefully some additional projects if 
> Troy can get people to actually volunteer. I say maybe JSword, because 
> that arguably falls under The SWORD Project--and I think it's to 
> everyone's advantage to simply ignore the underlying technology and 
> assume that it does. All of the frontends fall under The SWORD Project, 
> in terms of news. I don't really see an alternative perspective as to 
> what The SWORD Project _is_, if things like BT, GS, BibleCS, MacSword, 
> (possibly JSword, BD, etc.), and modules don't fall under the "The SWORD 
> Project" umbrella.
>
> The same goes for making the Sword forums into the CrossWire forums, 
> which I've seen mentioned once or twice. I think that is a completely 
> wrong-headed idea. Absolutely none of the forums have anything to do 
> with anything other than The SWORD Project.
>
> I don't think this aspect of re-organization achieves anything other 
> than to de-emphasize the news by putting it on a less prominent page and 
> to change from our more prominent brand "The SWORD Project" to a less 
> prominent one "The CrossWire Bible Society".

I don't have really strong opinions on this. Except to say....

Branding is important and needs to stay static until deliberately changed.

As I have always seen it (about 4.5 years for me), CrossWire is an 
umbrella organization. It is to CrossWire that module permissions are 
granted. It is CrossWire that relates to other organizations. When 
people "google" for Bible Software, they come to the CrossWire home page.

SWORD (whether C++ or Java) is the engine that CrossWire provides to 
serve CrossWire's mission. To me "The SWORD Project" is the engine and 
the development community that uses that engine.

Applications are written using the SWORD engine. The Windows product is 
called "The SWORD Project for Windows", but no other application is 
called "The SWORD Project". To me the engine and any application built 
from it are two different things. One is for developers; the other for 
users. The way the website was, the distinction was fuzzy.

I think the third leg of the CrossWire stool are the modules.

I guess I can see that if the CrossWire stool only consists of three 
SWORD legs, that the stool could be called The SWORD Project. But with 
the branching out into FlashCards and Papyrii tagging, I'm not sure that 
it should.

In Him,
    DM