<div dir="ltr"><div>To answer David's question, both AndBible and STEPBible use their own significantly modified forks of jsword.<br>And for good reason : as I mentioned in a conversation last year, the "official" jsword repository was left in a mostly unusable state, which forced both of its main users to fork it. Since DM Smith came back, one of his focus has been to work on reintegrating the changes from both of these forks in the official repo, which will hopefully improve the situation quite a lot - but will likely take a while.</div><div><br></div><div>From the licensing point of view, both of these forks are public, open-source, and apparently published under LGPL as well (according to the LicenseHeader.txt they kept on both repos).<br></div><div>So I guess they are both mostly respecting the LGPL requirements.<br></div><div>(STEPBible itself is licensed in BSD3, while AndBible is in GPLv3 - but as long as the modified library itself is republished under LGPL, I believe that's fine.)</div><div><br></div><div>Nevertheless, choosing an even more permissive licence like Apache 2.0 would greatly simplify the situation for everyone involved.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Greg, I do understand the philosophical decision involved, but I also believe that there is a good reason the open-source community has gradually shifted to avoid copyleft licenses for shared libraries.<br>It's just too inconvenient, due to the multiplicity of such licences that can conflict with each other, as you are experiencing right now.<br>Plus, the last 10 to 15 years have shown that many companies consider it in their own best interest to contribute to open-source projects or even publish their own work as open-source for such shared technical components. The standard web platform (mainly web browser engines) and the standard cloud platform (Kubernetes and tooling around it) have evolved extremely fast over a few years, all thanks to massive open-source contributions from many companies.<br></div><div><br></div><div>I guess it ultimately comes down to what we are protecting against, and whether it's worth the hassle.<br></div><div>And that's where I fail to really understand the current position : what is the risk of letting companies build a commercial product relying on libsword ?<br></div><div>First, what is the likelihood of this happening ? Are there many companies trying to sell bible study apps that would jump on libsword if it was not copyleft ?</div><div>Second, even if it does happen, what is really the problem with it ?<br></div><div>I mean, I understand you might not be quite happy with other people making money off your benevolent work - which is a perfectly natural feeling.<br></div><div>But on the other hand, if that commercial app meets some success while using libsword (and crediting crosswire, which is mandatory !), we get more users, wider exposure to our standards (more people will want to adopt OSIS and Sword modules), more ideas, more contributors, and overall a much livelier ecosystem. Sword would actually become the foundation of a "standard Bible platform".</div><div><br></div><div>I honestly don't see that as a threat, and I hope Troy will reconsider :-)</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div><br></div><div>Arnaud</div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">Le lun. 30 juin 2025 à 15:52, Peter von Kaehne <<a href="mailto:refdoc@gmx.net">refdoc@gmx.net</a>> a écrit :<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><div dir="ltr">Step Bible is to my mind the reason not ever to go LGPL. The sole reason STEP has the ESV and a dozen other modules we don’t have for us is a weird double encryption inside STEP we do not have access to. And Tyndale House behaves badly in terms of negotiating on everyone’s behalf. my view. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr" style="font-family:Aptos,Aptos_MSFontService,-apple-system,Roboto,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt">Peter</div><div id="m_1883575021550195069ms-outlook-mobile-body-separator-line" dir="ltr"><br></div><div id="m_1883575021550195069ms-outlook-mobile-signature">Sent from <a href="https://aka.ms/o0ukef" target="_blank">Outlook for iOS</a></div><div> </div><div id="m_1883575021550195069mail-editor-reference-message-container"><hr style="display:inline-block;width:98%"><div id="m_1883575021550195069divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><b>From:</b> sword-devel <<a href="mailto:sword-devel-bounces@crosswire.org" target="_blank">sword-devel-bounces@crosswire.org</a>> on behalf of David Haslam <<a href="mailto:dfhdfh@protonmail.com" target="_blank">dfhdfh@protonmail.com</a>><br><b>Sent:</b> Monday, June 30, 2025 2:40 pm<br><b>To:</b> sword-devel mailing list <<a href="mailto:sword-devel@crosswire.org" target="_blank">sword-devel@crosswire.org</a>><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [sword-devel] Script to find a best fit v11n</span><div style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"> </div></div><div dir="auto">Does anyone know whether STEP Bible uses JSword as is, or a modified form of JSword ?</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="auto">Asking in view of Arnaud’s observation about LGPL. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="auto">Kind regards,</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="auto">David</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div id="m_1883575021550195069protonmail_mobile_signature_block"><div>Sent from <a href="https://proton.me/mail/home" target="_blank">Proton Mail</a> for iOS</div></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div>On Mon, Jun 30, 2025 at 14:32, Arnaud Vié <<a href="mailto:On+Mon,+Jun+30,+2025+at+14:32,+Arnaud+Vié+%3C%3Ca+href=" target="_blank">unas.zole+avie@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<blockquote><div dir="ltr">
It might be a silly question, but can't we just consider changing the libsword license to something more permissive to allow such use cases, without overthinking about GPL compatibility issues ?
<br>
</div><div dir="ltr">
It is quite uncommon for open source libraries to use GPL nowadays, as it's very restrictive by nature. GPL remains mostly for "complete" applications - libraries tend to rather use LGPL, Apache 2.0 or MIT license (depending on the level of protection they seek), to favour wide usability.
</div><div dir="ltr"><br>
</div><div dir="ltr">It is to be noted that JSword is published under LGPL, which allows other apps to use it without constraints as long as it's not being modified.
<br>It would be enough for the current use case, and it would make sense for libsword and jsword to be aligned.
</div><div dir="ltr">
Personally speaking, I'd favour something more permissive like the Apache 2.0 license, which basically allows any usage or modification of any kind, but requires people to preserve the initial copyright notice and notify of significant changes.
</div><div dir="ltr"><br>
</div><div dir="ltr">
Of course, publishing under a new license can only be done by the current rights holder, which according to the libsword LICENSE is the "CrossWire Bible Society", as an organisation.
</div><div dir="ltr">
Does Troy have the full power of decision on the topic ?
</div><div dir="ltr">
Troy, what do you think of publishing libsword under a more permissive license ?
</div><div dir="ltr"><br>
</div><div dir="ltr">
Regards,
</div><div dir="ltr"><br>
</div><div dir="ltr">
Arnaud
</div><div dir="ltr"><br>
</div><div><br>
</div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">
Le lun. 30 juin 2025 à 14:43, Matěj Cepl <
<a href="mailto:mcepl@cepl.eu" target="_blank">mcepl@cepl.eu</a>> a écrit :
<br>
</div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204)"><div class="gmail_quote">
On Mon Jun 30, 2025 at 4:55 AM CEST, Aaron Rainbolt wrote:
<br>> From what I understand as someone who isn't a lawyer but has done
<br>> licensing audits for applications in Ubuntu and Debian, you'll only
<br>> run into issues if you publish *built binaries* of your code.
<br>
<br>That technically may be true, but it is a stupid idea. You don’t
<br>do open source software, which nobody can package and distribute.
<br>
<br>And apparently FSF doesn’t agree with my analysis:
<br>
<a href="https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#v2v3Compatibility" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#v2v3Compatibility</a>
<br>
<br>So, my only advice is to relicense your new program under GPLv2
<br>and send FSF to … Apparently, you will be in the distinguished
<br>company of Linus Torvalds and many others.
<br>
<br>Best,
<br>
<br>Matěj
<br>
<br>--
<br>
<a href="http://matej.ceplovi.cz/blog/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://matej.ceplovi.cz/blog/</a>, @mcepl@en.osm.town
<br>GPG Finger: 3C76 A027 CA45 AD70 98B5 BC1D 7920 5802 880B C9D8
<br>
<br>For those of you who think we are descendents from those cavemen
<br>who stood and fought with dinosaurs, you must be nuts, we are
<br>descendents from the ones who ran like hell to live.
<br>
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