[sword-devel] Project “Free Scriptures” started

[DM Smith]

On Feb 24, 2014, at 5:59 PM, Stephan Kreutzer <skreutzer at freiebibel.de> wrote:

>> The only module that we retain the text for is the KJV. I am the maintainer for that source, and if you'd like it, just ask. It is freely available, but I've not been very good on making it clear what is the most recent version. So ask and it is yours. But please, don't republish the source, instead point them to me so they can get the benefits of the fixes I make to the source. (That said, you don't have to do that. You can post a copy and face the problems of fixing it.) If others report problems to you, please pass them to me, so I can make corrections for everyone's benefit.
> 
> That's in fact a very strange situation. I guess with "KJV" you're not refering to the original, printed KJV, do you? If not, obviously, it's a modernized version. If it is, it might be copyright protected. So are you the copyright holder of modifications you did to the text of the original, printed KJV (1611 or 1769) or another digital, modified source by creating a new, independent work? What do you think or claim is the copyright status of your result?

I'm referring to the marked up text from which the SWORD KJV module is made. That's not strange.

The original, printed KJV is difficult to pin down. It certainly is not the 1611. That's easy to show. When I started working on it, the claim was that it was the 1769 edition. I've not been able to find such an edition. For proofing the text I use Old Scofield, which is from the turn of the previous century. It is a printed text. I've compared our e-text with all those I could find and used the Old Scofield to determine what it should be. I'd consider a different text if it were better. I've studied various histories of the KJV to help place the edition we have online as closely as possible to the 1769. Of the printed versions available today, most are modern variations.

Regarding copyright, you can read our conf. I won't reiterate it here.

The part we could claim copyright is the tagging of the New Testament Strong's numbers and perhaps the markup. I'ver personally spent lots of effort proofing and correcting the tagging. Read the conf to see what we think of that.

In this last release, I added the original Greek from the TR to complement the Strong's numbers. It's not mentioned in the conf, but I've contributed it in the same fashion as any other part of the work.

There are mistakes in the KJV module. As far as I know these are markup or tagging problems, not text problems. With the help of others, we've identified more than 80. I've corrected them and will be releasing an update (2.7) soon.

I've got other changes to the markup in mind. These will add further value to the text. For example, I'm working with a Hebrew scholar to add morphology information to the OT. I'm also working on updating the tagging of the NT based upon the latest tagging of the TR.

In His Service,
	DM

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