[sword-devel] Project "Free Scriptures" started

[Daniel Hughes]

I wonder if the fact that the sword module format is undocumented and
not published contributes to this perception. There are at least 4
different projects that I know of which implement sword module
support. And they have either had to look at the sword code and thus
accept GPL2 (no plus) licencing for there project or reverse engineer
sword modules from the ground up.

I can see how this would be perceived as closed behavior rather than
free and open. Publish your module format as a free and open standard
and you will probably avoid this kind of reaction to the sword
project.

God bless,
Daniel Hughes

On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 10:46 PM, John Zaitseff <J.Zaitseff at zap.org.au> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Jaak Ristioja wrote:
>
>> In addition, although Sword is GPL, there are many obstacles for
>> outsiders to actually start contributing to the project, hence I
>> somewhat understand why Sword might be perceived as not Free
>> software.
>
> One of the freedoms of the GNU General Public License is that anyone
> is able to take and fork the code.  By all means, go ahead and do
> so!
>
> The fact that no one seems to have done so (at least, as far as I
> can see, successfully) shows that it is not all that easy to do:
> apart from the actual coding, you have to convince other developers
> and distributors to use YOUR fork, not the original project...
>
> That said, other projects have been forked, sometimes with the
> original essentially dying off (eg, XFree86), other times with both
> forks going strong (OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice spring to mind).
>
> Yours truly,
>
> John Zaitseff
>
> --
> John Zaitseff                    ,--_|\    The ZAP Group
> Phone:  +61 2 9643 7737         /      \   Sydney, Australia
> E-mail: J.Zaitseff at zap.org.au   \_,--._*   http://www.zap.org.au/
>                                       v
>
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