[Pkg-crosswire-devel] Module dependencies

[Peter von Kaehne]

Jonathan Marsden wrote:
> Are you or your organization the copyright owner
> of any of this non-free data, BTW?

No. I am one of the volunteers of CrossWire. I do not own much of
anything and certainly no copyrights.

> If, OTOH, you are trying to use the people of the "free" Debian and
> Ubuntu world to support some sort of closed commercial endeavour
> involving proprietary closed data that people pay you for on a per-user
> basis... well, good luck with that scheme!

I think your personal assumptions are verging on the offensive.

I have no proprietary interest. I earn no money from CrossWire, nor does
anyone else on CrossWire earn money from modules.

We do have huge bunch of modules which are freely (re)distributable but
are not Public Domain.

We have a further large section of modules where we have worked hard to
convince the copyright owners that distribution  via CrossWire would not
harm whatever other intents they have with their texts. But they do not
want distribution by other entitites other than on a case by case
decision. Usually not for reasons of commerce but for one of copyright
control. Often in languages where people will actively try and
counterfeit the texts.

We have finally a small number of modules where we have convinced the
copyright holders that they should make their stuff available in our
format, even if they charge for it (they, not us). This appears to be
the only way to get to modern Western translations. If you can change
these people to see the light and distribute freely, great.

We have worked hard to convince many copyright holders to get to this
situation.

We generally try and push people towards the freest possible solution,
and this is where we got.

If you think you can improve on this and get all those people to make
their content Debian-free - go ahead. I will be delighted with such a
result.

In the meantime we have our most modern translations (i.e. most readable
 translations) under distribution licenses which are not free in the
Debian sense. We have also content (or currenly built it) in languages
highly relevant in terms of missions (Turkish, Arabic, Farsi, Somali)
which is freely distributable but may not be changed by the recipients.
So is not Debian free. You would need to exclude these and that harms
the project more than no modules in Debian.

By separating the content you make it appear we have only really old and
 unreadable content.

You have barged in with your fixed set of assumptions and have not
looked why we do things the way we do them. Instead you have thrown
about nasty and highly personal aspersions on my (and others) motives.

Peter