[Pkg-crosswire-devel] Packaging Sword modules

[Peter von Kaehne]

> I certainly don't mind a good conversation about how we can best work
> together to help people get the Bible on their computers, but I've
> honestly been a little shocked and saddened by this "cease and desist"
> attitude. I think it's pretty counterproductive and just raises
> tensions that don't need to be there. We all, I believe, have the same
> goal of spreading the Good News to our neighbors and enabling
> Christians to further their faith. This isn't a "us and them" thing,
> this is a group of people with common goals trying to figure out the
> best way to help others.

I am so sorry, Jordan.

The problem here right now is that this is a longer ongoing conversation
which had become extremely repetitive and I lost the will to live.

The references to "we can" and "cool tool" were references to earlier
posts prior to your joining where we were told that x hundred modules
were now packaged somewhere.

The problems for us at CrossWire are - in short order to recapitulate:

1) the previous provision of modules - particularly in the form of
actual dependencies - caused a support nightmare as people kept coming
to the mailing list "I got an Arabic module and I can not get rid of
it!" - moving from depends to suggest is clearly a solution here.

2) Installing via package manager renders the module manager helpless -
modules are installed but appear uninstallable if in /usr/share/sword

3) Unfortunately the better half of our modules are in various forms
copyrighted. We got permissions to distribute, we got often enough
permissions to redistribute but very few of our modern translations etc
fulfills Debian's policies on being sufficiently free. So as a
consequence you are left with packaging old, PD stuff but not the good
stuff.

4) When starting up without modules the package manager opens up and
offers to install. This can happen from any source, but will usually
happen via the internet. Most of our modules are small and I certainly
have installed via dial-up a lot of exciting stuff. If you pre-install
or take the package manager route you cut out this first step and
subsequently people will take a while (or never) to realise that stuff
is available for them - e.g our Turkish, Persian and Arabic content is
all not free enough for Debian. Lots of our other languages the same. So
   by offering some stuff (old and limited range of languages) you are
actually precluding that people realise what all _is_ available

5) We _are_ extremely cautious at CrossWire re copyrights and have taken
 nearly superstitious amounts of care to keep only PD or modules with
clear permissions in our repository - quite unlike a number of other
projects. But even despite this - we had a share of nasty surprises when
material advertised as PD was after all not PD. The most painful of
these experiences where our Portuguese Bible and later a wonderful
collection of maps. When we got the notification that these modules were
not kosher we had them down in 5 mins flat (I was on  IRC during latter
episode and witnessed things) We can live with this risk, but we do not
wish to take any responsibility for another project.

6) absence of notification in the past about what we really think about
module debs - this is the unfortunate result of ever entrenching upset
with the lack of up to date stuff in Ubuntu's repos and the lack of
response when we complained about the modules to whom we thought
responsible for it all (not entirely correctly so). We had tried to get
it updated in the past 2 years but got no where and a lot of us had
ended up in a silly "stuff them!" attitude (Me included). Only finally
sense returned and we made a new and more successful attempt at getting
things right again,

There were a few more reasons mentioned, but bottom line is that we do
not consider the apt-get mechanism and the Ubuntu/Debian repos the best
way forward for the modules.

We are extremely grateful for the effort to package things up and create
again a great resource on Ubuntu and Debian instead of the outdated
stuff which is there right now.

I am sure there are ways forward beyond this point right now-
particularly also in the area of custom distributions in particular
nasty or remote areas of the world, but can we for the moment leave this
aside? Most of our modules _are_ redistributable (just not fit for
inclusion in Debian's repos dyue to  Debian's strict standards on
freeness) and hence it should be easy to figure out custom distros for
particular purposes.

Again, there was no intention to upset, of shooting from the hip or of
posting cease and desist letters. Acute exasperation at the
repetitiveness of it all was the background to my terse last post

in Him

Peter