[sword-devel] Project “Free Scriptures” started

Mon Feb 24 17:21:14 MST 2014

Jaak,

I hesitate to even humor yet another response to unwarranted criticism.

Let's just say what you really mean:  You think people have trouble 
contributing to the SWORD project because we don't use your choice of 
source control software and because we have a very tight approval 
process for acceptance of code into our core engine.

I am sorry, but these things are not on our agenda to change.

Troy

On 02/24/2014 02:35 AM, Jaak Ristioja wrote:
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> Hi!
>
> I must say that although I do not agree with all the criticism of the
> Sword project I do agree with some of it, and I actually hope that a
> bit of healthy competition would help both parties.
>
> IMHO this again highlights some of the problems of the Sword project
> which have also been discussed previously: e.g. Sword module formats
> are not well documented and formalized (making them "unreadable"). 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.
> The same goes for the distribution (and modification) of modules.
>
> It seems to me that the "Free Scriptures" project is an effort to
> develop a more open project with more freely distributable and
> modifiable modules. Seems like a good idea to me.
>
> Blessings,
> Jaak
>
> PS: Personally I'd consider a BSD/MIT license for the software.
>
>
> On 22.02.2014 22:02, Stephan Kreutzer wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I just want to announce that the project “Free Scriptures” (see
>> http://www.free-scriptures.org) was started some time ago, which
>> has the goal of developing freely licensed software for processing
>> bible texts into various output formats. It will also serve as
>> platform for “language teams” who work on the digitalization,
>> proofreading and reproduction of bible texts of their native
>> language. This way, we hope to establish a repository of public
>> domain and freely licensed bible texts, which are carefully checked
>> and ready for processing. At the same time, the language teams will
>> be responsible for preparing and publishing the bible texts
>> according to the context of their own language. The international
>> “Free Scriptures” platform is intended to help the
>> language-specific “branches” of the project. As we promote free
>> software philosophy and practices in the field of bible software,
>> we’re therefore limited to bible translations which are either in
>> the public domain or which are freely licensed initially. Not only
>> are our software tools freely licensed, they’re also required to be
>> usable on freely licensed computer software environments. We refuse
>> to use or integrate non-free, restrictive, proprietary software,
>> because digital freedom matters for each and every user, especially
>> if it comes to a highly important topic like the text of the bible.
>> Please note that price isn’t an issue at all as we face artificial
>> legal and technical restrictions – freely licensed bible software
>> and bible texts can be used commercially and non-commercially at
>> the same time.
>>
>> Since the SWORD project doesn’t seem to be much concerned about
>> digital freedom (no repository of OSIS sources, only unreadable
>> SWORD modules) or the quality of bible texts (no checking,
>> distribution of incorrect texts), I hope you at least don’t hinder
>> our efforts, since you too can benefit from them. Probably you may
>> even improve your approach to one which is more compatible with
>> other free (bible) software. If you have some questions or
>> suggestions, please feel free to contact us. We host a discussion
>> board on our website, where guests have write access. At the
>> moment, there are several posts present in German language, which
>> only stay there for the purpose of translation.
>>
>> As a first task, we’re working on a tool for converting OSIS to
>> Haggai XML. In the past, we’ve specified Haggai XML as our own
>> bible text encoding format, which is based on Zefania XML. Since
>> neither Zefania XML nor OSIS are well-designed XML formats for
>> bible text encoding, Haggai XML was intended as an improvement
>> suggestion for Zefania XML. Zefania XML will now get improved to
>> Zefania XML 2014, hopefully by keeping it’s basic and primitive
>> structure, which is ideal for the digitalization of old, printed
>> bible texts. If Zefania XML 2014 gets released, we will consider to
>> replace Haggai XML as main input format for our tools by it. As for
>> now, we automatically generate PDF, EPUB2/3 and XHTML from Haggai
>> XML input. In order to do the processing for the German “Offene
>> Bibel” (“Open Bible” – the only freely-licensed modern bible
>> translation in German language, which gets translated
>> collaboratively on Wiki software, providing OSIS output), we work
>> on a simple, basic conversion from OSIS to Haggai XML, so that we
>> can use all of our tools we’ve developed so far. Those tools will
>> get migrated to “Free Scriptures” within the next time.
>>
>>
>> Sincerely, Stephan Kreutzer
>>
>>
>> PS: I can’t register to your forum, the registration form gives a
>> 404.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________ sword-devel mailing
>> list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
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