Lets suppose the Sword project received an inquiry such as the one below. What would the response be? Would the Sword Project be able to help?
------- Dear Sword Project I am the president of a small publishing company that produces material for the Christian market. For the past 5 years we have been working with some of today's leading evangelical scholars to produce a commentary series on the whole Bible. We are about 6 months from completing this project and are considering distribution possibilities other than standard print. We have approached the major Bible software makers, but have come to the conclusion that the initial financial commitment is cost prohibitive. then we heard about The Sword Project and your free Bible software package. We would like to speak to you about making our commentary series, and perhaps some of our other previously published material, available in the Sword Project format. We see that all of your material is currently in the public domain and without cost. We applaud your efforts and wish that we could distribute our material for free, however in order for us to recoup the costs incurred with such a large project, and to finance subsequent projects we have decided to charge a nominal fee for our digital material. Would our selling of Sword Modules be incongruent with your mission statement? Would it be possible to bundle our purchasable modules with your free modules and free software? We envision two modes of digital delivery. The first would be via our forthcoming web site. We would like customers to be able to download locked modules from our site and purchase an unlock key. Is their currently a mechanism in place for Sword modules to be unlocked after authorization? The second delivery method would be a full package CD ROM containing our material, the Sword software, and as much free public domain material as can fit on the CD. Our main concern with this is software piracy. Unfortunately, dealing with Christian material does not preclude the possibility of piracy. We are familiar enough with the software industry to know that there is no feasible way to squelch unauthorized copying altogether. All we would want is some sort of mechanism that would deter easy copying of the material. Some sort of customer code registration tied into the software would probably be adequate. CDs would be available through direct mail-order and in Christian Book stores throughout the United States. We look forward to your reply. for the cause of Christ, Joe B. Publisher ------------------------ I think I got a little carried away with that role playing. lol Basically, what would the Sword Project say to someone like this? Is there a way for him to sell his locked modules? How would he go about locking the modules, distributing the keys, tracking customers, and preventing piracy? Are these things possible with Sword? do they go against the mission statement. Would his plans conflict with the current Sword license? by grace alone, Don A. Elbourne Jr. http://elbourne.org
