[sword-devel] Fwd: Re: Fwd: Other libraries

[jonathon]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:30, Andrew Greig  wrote:

This email arrived in my gmail account today (6 April 2009)

>> In general we do not import from e-sword and have also no documentation for that available.

There is some documentation, that describes how to importing e-Sword
resources into _The Sword Project_ resources. I don't have the URLs
for either the utility programs, or the documentation.

I _think_ Andrew wrote the following:

>if it could be possible to download a Paid for Bible from the e-Sword repository?

Converting the commercially distributed e-Sword resources to the
format used by the Sword Project would be a technical DMCA violation.

> I imagined that the e-Sword (Windows) program was drawing on the sword libraries,

e-Sword does not use any libraries from The Sword Project.
( e-Sword and The Sword Project use different presentation markup
languages and different format types for their resources. (One of the
front ends of The Sword Project does use the same programming language
as e-Sword. That is about as close as they get.) )

> could be purchased for e-Sword, I naturally thought that there may have been a way to sell them to Linux users as well.

Equipping Ministries has to negotiate one license for e-Sword, and a
second license for Pocket e-Sword.  For a native Linux application,
they probably would have to negotiate a third license.

As far as negotiation for a license for/on behalf of _The Sword
Project_ goes, AFAIK, nobody has asked them to that.  Were they to do
that, my guess is that they would set up a new site just for _The
Sword Project_ resources.

> I understand that Open Source means that apart from the software making the source code available, in many cases it is also free as in gratis,

Open Source is about libre, not gratis. Distribution that is gratis,
is a side-effect of it being libre.

> Is there any relationship (other than the blood of Christ) between the e-Sword project and the Sword Project?

Historically, no.
There are several fundamental differences in their respective outlook
on the "best" way to code Bible Study software.

>Does the Crosswire Bible Society intend to have a range of translations available for sale?

The intention is there.

Getting permission from publishers to distribute their content, can be
a long, arduous process.  Once one has permission, one then has to
convert the files they send, to the format that the software can use.
Unfortunately, publishers don't always send the files, when they send
the permission, or even when they send emails saying that the files
are on their way via snailmail/FedEx/etc.

I've forgotten which program it was, but it migrated from a FLOSS
license, to closed source, proprietary, because that was the only way
it could get permission to distribute some of the more recent
resources that its users requested.

jonathon