<alert comment="uninformed opinion from someone who is not all that experienced about the issues and who has developed several open source freeware projects and who believes in open source... and ianal.ndipootv">
I speculate that Bible publishers are more inclined to be receptive to working with "closed source" venders. I would worry if I were them ... whether the large expense to translate, publish, and market was "at risk" from "crackable" encryption. How closed is a module if the customized compression is open source in a svn available .cpp file? mod2vpl seems to invite "verse mongers" ... as near as I can tell. I give the publishers of texts such as MKJV, LITV, etc. much credit for making their Bible texts available to open source "verders". But I am astonished that Bibles such as the ESV, MSG, AMP, etc are available at no charge to closed source "vender(s)". To God be the glory ... and I believe those publishers are "storing up" some hearty "well done good and faithful servant" comments from our Savior. <warning comment="perhaps reopening a tired topic"> I am basically sympathetic to recovering costs and making a healthy profit on Bible publishing. Opinions obviously differ. <g> I think that profitability has a lot to do with the "embarrassment of riches" that English speaking Christians have ... an enormous number of good to excellent choices. I belief Adam Smith was a minister and considered that the "invisible hand of self-interest" was Biblically not so bad .... perhaps even inspired in such a fallen world. I suppose it will be on "the other side" that we will be more fully aware of just how miserably fallen we are. I recall a quote from Troy G (or mpj ...the WEB principal translater?) that the Word of God is so powerful, that even marginally adequate translations are sufficient for knowing what we need to know about God, His Son, His expectations, and our salvation. (not that the WEB is only marginally adequate). We have more of a problem with "bruises on our noses" from thumping each other with our KJV perference over the NIV, for example, or vice verse. Advocates of literal translations may "look down their noses" at equivalent translations. TR vs Alexandrian squabbles. Please. Just Say No. We are truly blessed. </warning> If I understood a previous post, the idea of getting an "unlock key" from a commercial publisher that works with CrossWire has a lot of merit. Considering the CD delivery delays that at least used to be the case, do we really want to be in that line of business? I wonder about the idea of talking to the ESV publishers about providing customized executables. They distribute a CD with their hardcopy, and it could possibly include one or more sword executables that installed and "just worked". I don't know how that would work with GPL, however. ianal Oops ... I was trying to behave myself and tone down the "who cares" opinions ... </alert> _______________________________________________ sword-devel mailing list sword-devel@crosswire.org http://www.crosswire.org/mailman/listinfo/sword-devel
