[sword-devel] Project "Free Scriptures" started

refdoc@gmx.net refdoc at gmx.net
Mon Feb 24 22:51:07 MST 2014


Further to DM, crossconnect is the only project of which I am aware which in recent years have tried to reimplement and actually got it off the ground.  Sharpsword was an attempt to create c# bindings. Like many previous attempts to get to workings c# bindings it failed/was abandoned. Crossconnect sole raison d'etre is the apparent difficulty to have working c# bindings. 
On the other side, the number of projects which use the API is growing every year . Only yesterday I found two projects which are very much alive, of which nothing really is known here on sworddevel. One is a windows One, the other a BeOS. The latter one probably really shows the huge value of the API, in that someone on a complete fringe platform is able to port and use the API, without a hint of reference to sword devel or other assistance from crosswire

Sent from my HTC

----- Reply message -----
From: "DM Smith" <dmsmith at crosswire.org>
To: "SWORD Developers' Collaboration Forum" <sword-devel at crosswire.org>
Cc: "SWORD Developers' Collaboration Forum" <sword-devel at crosswire.org>
Subject: [sword-devel] Project "Free Scriptures" started
Date: Tue, Feb 25, 2014 04:21


Small correction: JSword is part of The SWORD Project and was created by members of CrossWire Bible Society. We've also created SWIG and Corba bindings so that the SWORD library is available in many contexts.

Many of the modules have been licensed to CrossWire for use by The SWORD Project. Not for other software projects that can read the module format. 

--DM

> On Feb 24, 2014, at 9:56 PM, Daniel Hughes <trampster at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Regardless of what you want, the fact is that it's already to late.
> JSword, sharpsword, CrossConnect and who knows what else already use
> your format.
> 
> You are the authoritative source for other projects weather you like
> it or not. The sword modules you have are an invaluable resource for
> other projects which go far beyond the usefulness of libsword itself.
> This is evident by the mere existence of all these projects using
> sword modules but not using libsword, (each of them have done it
> because they can't use libsword)
> 
> Trying to hold onto this ideology is no longer productive. You have
> produced something amazingly good and useful. Please help us all by
> publishing the module format.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Daniel Hughes
> 
>> On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 1:04 PM, Troy A. Griffitts <scribe at crosswire.org> wrote:
>> Historically, CrossWire has always maintained that our data formats are
>> volatile.  We optimize them, add new features to them, basically change them
>> if we feel they need changing.  In reality one could say that they haven't
>> changed much in the past few years, but this is only cursorily true.  The
>> internal markup forms we process in the data format has changed
>> significantly and continues to change.  We don't encourage projects to use
>> our data formats directly because of this and the fact that we don't want to
>> be used as an authoritative document repository (see previous email).
>> 
>> Summary: we don't encourage other projects to use our data sources for their
>> own projects; we encourage them to use our API.  Our data formats and
>> internal markup change and we don't wish to maintain them as a standard
>> (primarily because we don't want to be the authoritative data source for a
>> work for other projects).
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 02/24/2014 01:30 PM, Daniel Hughes wrote:
>>> 
>>> 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
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
>>>> http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>>>> Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
>>> http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>>> Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
>> http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
>> Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page
> 
> _______________________________________________
> sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
> http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
> Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page

_______________________________________________
sword-devel mailing list: sword-devel at crosswire.org
http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
Instructions to unsubscribe/change your settings at above page
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.crosswire.org/pipermail/sword-devel/attachments/20140225/1499ddd8/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the sword-devel mailing list