Hey team, I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She says that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects" and they also request that we remove the MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know but maybe you should suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the MorphGNT.)
Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!
What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this issue, to generate royalties for them while at the same time promote open access to Scripture. I don't believe that their closed-source licensing policy can survive given the current technological environment. We need to figure out how present a shift in policy as a positive change.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Schubert, Beate Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM Subject: Open Scriptures To: Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
Dear Weston,
I understand your Open Scriptures project as being not-for-profit and open source.
The German Bible Society is a not-for-profit religious foundation. Its mission, in collaboration with other members of the United Bible Societies, is to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible translation work in order to make the Bible available to everybody in their own language.
Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money. Therefore, according to the standing rules of our foundation, we have to earn money with our texts to enable further Bible translations worldwide.
Please understand that as a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects.
Regarding the "MorphGNT with UBS4" on the Open Scriptures website: This is again a copyright infringement as the basis of the text is the UBS4. We ask you to remove this text from your website, too, as we are the copyright holder of the UBS4.
With kind regards,
Beate
Beate Schubert, M.A. Lizenzabteilung/License Department *Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society *
So the licensing problem is with the source, MorphGNT. But the
MorphGNT is itself open-licensed as derivative of CCAT. So did the
German Bible Society allow CCAT to use this material under an open
license, and if so why does that not trickle down to this project?
The MorphGNT text is up at a lot of sites. If it is not (legally) open-
licensed, then all those derivative projects are in danger. It is is,
then those derivative projects should be protected.
I am removing my ebook.
Tommy
On Mar 18, 10:46 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey team,
> I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She says
> that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4 Bible
> text for open source projects" and they also request that we remove the
> MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know but maybe you should
> suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the MorphGNT.)
> Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!
> What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this issue, to
> generate royalties for them while at the same time promote open access to
> Scripture. I don't believe that their closed-source licensing policy can
> survive given the current technological environment. We need to figure out
> how present a shift in policy as a positive change.
> What do you think?
> Weston
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Schubert, Beate
> Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM
> Subject: Open Scriptures
> To: Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
> Dear Weston,
> I understand your Open Scriptures project as being not-for-profit and open
> source.
> The German Bible Society is a not-for-profit religious foundation. Its
> mission, in collaboration with other members of the United Bible Societies,
> is to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible translation work in
> order to make the Bible available to everybody in their own language.
> Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money. Therefore,
> according to the standing rules of our foundation, we have to earn money
> with our texts to enable further Bible translations worldwide.
> Please understand that as a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or
> the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects.
> Regarding the "MorphGNT with UBS4" on the Open Scriptures website: This is
> again a copyright infringement as the basis of the text is the UBS4. We ask
> you to remove this text from your website, too, as we are the copyright
> holder of the UBS4.
> With kind regards,
> Beate
> Beate Schubert, M.A.
> Lizenzabteilung/License Department
> *Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society
> *
On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 7:59 AM, Tommy <keeneto...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So the licensing problem is with the source, MorphGNT. But the
> MorphGNT is itself open-licensed as derivative of CCAT. So did the
> German Bible Society allow CCAT to use this material under an open
> license, and if so why does that not trickle down to this project?
> The MorphGNT text is up at a lot of sites. If it is not (legally) open-
> licensed, then all those derivative projects are in danger. It is is,
> then those derivative projects should be protected.
> I am removing my ebook.
> Tommy
> On Mar 18, 10:46 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hey team,
> > I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She says
> > that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4
> Bible
> > text for open source projects" and they also request that we remove the
> > MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know but maybe you
> should
> > suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the MorphGNT.)
> > Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!
> > What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this issue, to
> > generate royalties for them while at the same time promote open access to
> > Scripture. I don't believe that their closed-source licensing policy can
> > survive given the current technological environment. We need to figure
> out
> > how present a shift in policy as a positive change.
> > What do you think?
> > Weston
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Schubert, Beate
> > Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM
> > Subject: Open Scriptures
> > To: Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
> > Dear Weston,
> > I understand your Open Scriptures project as being not-for-profit and
> open
> > source.
> > The German Bible Society is a not-for-profit religious foundation. Its
> > mission, in collaboration with other members of the United Bible
> Societies,
> > is to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible translation work in
> > order to make the Bible available to everybody in their own language.
> > Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money. Therefore,
> > according to the standing rules of our foundation, we have to earn money
> > with our texts to enable further Bible translations worldwide.
> > Please understand that as a matter of principle we don't license the NA27
> or
> > the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects.
> > Regarding the "MorphGNT with UBS4" on the Open Scriptures website: This
> is
> > again a copyright infringement as the basis of the text is the UBS4. We
> ask
> > you to remove this text from your website, too, as we are the copyright
> > holder of the UBS4.
> > With kind regards,
> > Beate
> > Beate Schubert, M.A.
> > Lizenzabteilung/License Department
> > *Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society
> > *
The danger with MorphGNT has generally been when the text column in the database has been used to generate a sequential text. In its raw form, MorphGNT is somewhat less problematic although there are still things I'd like to do to make the analysis it includes more separated from the UBS text.
Ulrik and I have long planned to split MorphGNT into three relations: one with analysis at the lexeme level, one with analysis at the form level and one that maps various texts to the form analysis (because of ambiguities, that can't just be a text match). This separation would not only enable the analysis to be applied to multiple texts (thus enabling Ulrik and I to unify our respective Tischendorf/WH and MorphGNT analyses) but provide for a cleaner copyright situation.
For those actually wanting to produce sequential texts, though, the only solution may be to use something like Tischendorf or WH as a base text and to provide differences from NA/UBS via apparatus.
> Hey team, > I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She > says that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the > UBS4 Bible text for open source projects" and they also request that > we remove the MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know > but maybe you should suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the > MorphGNT.)
> Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!
> What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this > issue, to generate royalties for them while at the same time promote > open access to Scripture. I don't believe that their closed-source > licensing policy can survive given the current technological > environment. We need to figure out how present a shift in policy as > a positive change.
> What do you think?
> Weston
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Schubert, Beate > Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM > Subject: Open Scriptures > To: Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
> Dear Weston,
> I understand your Open Scriptures project as being not-for-profit > and open source.
> The German Bible Society is a not-for-profit religious foundation. > Its mission, in collaboration with other members of the United Bible > Societies, is to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible > translation work in order to make the Bible available to everybody > in their own language.
> Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money. > Therefore, according to the standing rules of our foundation, we > have to earn money with our texts to enable further Bible > translations worldwide.
> Please understand that as a matter of principle we don't license the > NA27 or the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects.
> Regarding the "MorphGNT with UBS4" on the Open Scriptures website: > This is again a copyright infringement as the basis of the text is > the UBS4. We ask you to remove this text from your website, too, as > we are the copyright holder of the UBS4.
> With kind regards,
> Beate
> Beate Schubert, M.A. > Lizenzabteilung/License Department > Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society
> I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to promote > biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the Scriptures > accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting to fulfill > it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically interlinking > manuscripts, translations, morphosyntactic parsings, annotations, and other > related data... Biblical study will be greatly assisted for speakers of > minority languages who haven't benefited from thousands of scholars' > research in the English and German speaking worlds. For example, if a Creole > translation is semantically linked back to Greek and Hebrew, it can benefit > from the data attached to German and English translations since they would > be all connected together
> I also understand that Biblical research and translation work costs a lot > of money, and I understand (and affirm) the German Bible Society's policy to > charge for the work it produces. I wholeheartedly affirm the DBG's mission, > and I want to support your essential work. One of my core philosophies > regarding the Open Scriptures project is that "the laborer deserves his > wages" (Luke 10:7 ESV). Content owners like the DBG have a right to receive > compensation for their labors, and I want to affirm this right in the Open > Scriptures project.
> Therefore, my hope is that non-free resources such as NA27/UBS4 may be > incorporated into Open Scriptures via either donations, ads, and/or > subscriptions. The proceeds from these revenue sources can be used to > compensate the DBG for your scholarship. I want Open Scriptures to be an > avenue by which the DBG may receive financial support to further its > critical work, while at the same time make it possible for your data to > enter “The next Web of open, linked data” for Scripture. This quotation > comes form a talk by Tim Berners-Lee (who is credited with inventing the > Internet). Please refer to his 15 min talk available here: > http://openscriptures.org/2009/03/the-next-web-of-open-linked-data-fo...
> All of this is to say that I do not intend that Open Scriptures should > incorporate the German Bible Society's content without due compensation.
> Best of regards, > Weston
I hope this will change the German Bible Society's perception of the project.
On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hey team, > I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She says > that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4 Bible > text for open source projects" and they also request that we remove the > MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know but maybe you should > suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the MorphGNT.)
> Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!
> What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this issue, to > generate royalties for them while at the same time promote open access to > Scripture. I don't believe that their closed-source licensing policy can > survive given the current technological environment. We need to figure out > how present a shift in policy as a positive change.
> What do you think?
> Weston
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Schubert, Beate > Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM > Subject: Open Scriptures > To: Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
> Dear Weston,
> I understand your Open Scriptures project as being not-for-profit and open > source.
> The German Bible Society is a not-for-profit religious foundation. Its > mission, in collaboration with other members of the United Bible Societies, > is to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible translation work in > order to make the Bible available to everybody in their own language.
> Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money. Therefore, > according to the standing rules of our foundation, we have to earn money > with our texts to enable further Bible translations worldwide.
> Please understand that as a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 > or the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects.
> Regarding the "MorphGNT with UBS4" on the Open Scriptures website: This is > again a copyright infringement as the basis of the text is the UBS4. We ask > you to remove this text from your website, too, as we are the copyright > holder of the UBS4.
> With kind regards,
> Beate
> Beate Schubert, M.A. > Lizenzabteilung/License Department > *Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society > *
> I just sent the following email to the German Bible Society:
> Dear Beate,
> > I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to promote
> > biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the Scriptures
> > accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting to fulfill
> > it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically interlinking
> > manuscripts, translations, morphosyntactic parsings, annotations, and other
> > related data... Biblical study will be greatly assisted for speakers of
> > minority languages who haven't benefited from thousands of scholars'
> > research in the English and German speaking worlds. For example, if a Creole
> > translation is semantically linked back to Greek and Hebrew, it can benefit
> > from the data attached to German and English translations since they would
> > be all connected together
> > I also understand that Biblical research and translation work costs a lot
> > of money, and I understand (and affirm) the German Bible Society's policy to
> > charge for the work it produces. I wholeheartedly affirm the DBG's mission,
> > and I want to support your essential work. One of my core philosophies
> > regarding the Open Scriptures project is that "the laborer deserves his
> > wages" (Luke 10:7 ESV). Content owners like the DBG have a right to receive
> > compensation for their labors, and I want to affirm this right in the Open
> > Scriptures project.
> > Therefore, my hope is that non-free resources such as NA27/UBS4 may be
> > incorporated into Open Scriptures via either donations, ads, and/or
> > subscriptions. The proceeds from these revenue sources can be used to
> > compensate the DBG for your scholarship. I want Open Scriptures to be an
> > avenue by which the DBG may receive financial support to further its
> > critical work, while at the same time make it possible for your data to
> > enter “The next Web of open, linked data” for Scripture. This quotation
> > comes form a talk by Tim Berners-Lee (who is credited with inventing the
> > Internet). Please refer to his 15 min talk available here:
> >http://openscriptures.org/2009/03/the-next-web-of-open-linked-data-fo...
> > All of this is to say that I do not intend that Open Scriptures should
> > incorporate the German Bible Society's content without due compensation.
> > Best of regards,
> > Weston
> I hope this will change the German Bible Society's perception of the
> project.
> Weston
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hey team,
> > I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She says
> > that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4 Bible
> > text for open source projects" and they also request that we remove the
> > MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know but maybe you should
> > suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the MorphGNT.)
> > Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!
> > What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this issue, to
> > generate royalties for them while at the same time promote open access to
> > Scripture. I don't believe that their closed-source licensing policy can
> > survive given the current technological environment. We need to figure out
> > how present a shift in policy as a positive change.
> > What do you think?
> > Weston
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Schubert, Beate
> > Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM
> > Subject: Open Scriptures
> > To: Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
> > Dear Weston,
> > I understand your Open Scriptures project as being not-for-profit and open
> > source.
> > The German Bible Society is a not-for-profit religious foundation. Its
> > mission, in collaboration with other members of the United Bible Societies,
> > is to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible translation work in
> > order to make the Bible available to everybody in their own language.
> > Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money. Therefore,
> > according to the standing rules of our foundation, we have to earn money
> > with our texts to enable further Bible translations worldwide.
> > Please understand that as a matter of principle we don't license the NA27
> > or the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects.
> > Regarding the "MorphGNT with UBS4" on the Open Scriptures website: This is
> > again a copyright infringement as the basis of the text is the UBS4. We ask
> > you to remove this text from your website, too, as we are the copyright
> > holder of the UBS4.
> > With kind regards,
> > Beate
> > Beate Schubert, M.A.
> > Lizenzabteilung/License Department
> > *Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society
> > *
I am totaly heart broken. I live in Japan and have been using this
site. Is this what it is all about? Hiding the scriptures from the
world? I really needed this site. The only one who should have
copyright of the scriptures is God. This is devestating news for me...
On Mar 21, 6:15 am, Weston Ruter <WestonRu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Clearly we need to resolve these copyright issues.
> On Mar 18, 10:40 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I just sent the following email to the German Bible Society:
> > Dear Beate,
> > > I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to promote
> > > biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the Scriptures
> > > accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting to fulfill
> > > it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically interlinking
> > > manuscripts, translations, morphosyntactic parsings, annotations, and other
> > > related data... Biblical study will be greatly assisted for speakers of
> > > minority languages who haven't benefited from thousands of scholars'
> > > research in the English and German speaking worlds. For example, if a Creole
> > > translation is semantically linked back to Greek and Hebrew, it can benefit
> > > from the data attached to German and English translations since they would
> > > be all connected together
> > > I also understand that Biblical research and translation work costs a lot
> > > of money, and I understand (and affirm) the German Bible Society's policy to
> > > charge for the work it produces. I wholeheartedly affirm the DBG's mission,
> > > and I want to support your essential work. One of my core philosophies
> > > regarding the Open Scriptures project is that "the laborer deserves his
> > > wages" (Luke 10:7 ESV). Content owners like the DBG have a right to receive
> > > compensation for their labors, and I want to affirm this right in the Open
> > > Scriptures project.
> > > Therefore, my hope is that non-free resources such as NA27/UBS4 may be
> > > incorporated into Open Scriptures via either donations, ads, and/or
> > > subscriptions. The proceeds from these revenue sources can be used to
> > > compensate the DBG for your scholarship. I want Open Scriptures to be an
> > > avenue by which the DBG may receive financial support to further its
> > > critical work, while at the same time make it possible for your data to
> > > enter “The next Web of open, linked data” for Scripture. This quotation
> > > comes form a talk by Tim Berners-Lee (who is credited with inventing the
> > > Internet). Please refer to his 15 min talk available here:
> > >http://openscriptures.org/2009/03/the-next-web-of-open-linked-data-fo...
> > > All of this is to say that I do not intend that Open Scriptures should
> > > incorporate the German Bible Society's content without due compensation.
> > > Best of regards,
> > > Weston
> > I hope this will change the German Bible Society's perception of the
> > project.
> > Weston
> > On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hey team,
> > > I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She says
> > > that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4 Bible
> > > text for open source projects" and they also request that we remove the
> > > MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know but maybe you should
> > > suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the MorphGNT.)
> > > Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!
> > > What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this issue, to
> > > generate royalties for them while at the same time promote open access to
> > > Scripture. I don't believe that their closed-source licensing policy can
> > > survive given the current technological environment. We need to figure out
> > > how present a shift in policy as a positive change.
> > > What do you think?
> > > Weston
> > > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > > From: Schubert, Beate
> > > Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM
> > > Subject: Open Scriptures
> > > To: Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
> > > Dear Weston,
> > > I understand your Open Scriptures project as being not-for-profit and open
> > > source.
> > > The German Bible Society is a not-for-profit religious foundation. Its
> > > mission, in collaboration with other members of the United Bible Societies,
> > > is to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible translation work in
> > > order to make the Bible available to everybody in their own language.
> > > Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money. Therefore,
> > > according to the standing rules of our foundation, we have to earn money
> > > with our texts to enable further Bible translations worldwide.
> > > Please understand that as a matter of principle we don't license the NA27
> > > or the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects.
> > > Regarding the "MorphGNT with UBS4" on the Open Scriptures website: This is
> > > again a copyright infringement as the basis of the text is the UBS4. We ask
> > > you to remove this text from your website, too, as we are the copyright
> > > holder of the UBS4.
> > > With kind regards,
> > > Beate
> > > Beate Schubert, M.A.
> > > Lizenzabteilung/License Department
> > > *Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society
> > > *- Hide quoted text -
I still maintain that the crucial point is the licensing of the
MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of Creative
Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative projects are
protected. That license explicitly allows transformations: "to Remix —
to adapt the work." So taking out the morphological tags would simply
be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting product is
similarly licensed it should be legal
Of course maintaining that on a discussion list and defending it in
court are two totally different things.
It also seems to me that the real value of the GBS books is the
critical apparatus. That's why people will continue to buy there
books, even if the text itself is open. So far from cutting into
profits, an open data model would actually promote the company and the
text they produce. ESV, of course, would be a classic example.
On Mar 20, 5:15 pm, Weston Ruter <WestonRu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Clearly we need to resolve these copyright issues.
> On Mar 18, 10:40 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I just sent the following email to the German Bible Society:
> > Dear Beate,
> > > I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to promote
> > > biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the Scriptures
> > > accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting to fulfill
> > > it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically interlinking
> > > manuscripts, translations, morphosyntactic parsings, annotations, and other
> > > related data... Biblical study will be greatly assisted for speakers of
> > > minority languages who haven't benefited from thousands of scholars'
> > > research in the English and German speaking worlds. For example, if a Creole
> > > translation is semantically linked back to Greek and Hebrew, it can benefit
> > > from the data attached to German and English translations since they would
> > > be all connected together
> > > I also understand that Biblical research and translation work costs a lot
> > > of money, and I understand (and affirm) the German Bible Society's policy to
> > > charge for the work it produces. I wholeheartedly affirm the DBG's mission,
> > > and I want to support your essential work. One of my core philosophies
> > > regarding the Open Scriptures project is that "the laborer deserves his
> > > wages" (Luke 10:7 ESV). Content owners like the DBG have a right to receive
> > > compensation for their labors, and I want to affirm this right in the Open
> > > Scriptures project.
> > > Therefore, my hope is that non-free resources such as NA27/UBS4 may be
> > > incorporated into Open Scriptures via either donations, ads, and/or
> > > subscriptions. The proceeds from these revenue sources can be used to
> > > compensate the DBG for your scholarship. I want Open Scriptures to be an
> > > avenue by which the DBG may receive financial support to further its
> > > critical work, while at the same time make it possible for your data to
> > > enter “The next Web of open, linked data” for Scripture. This quotation
> > > comes form a talk by Tim Berners-Lee (who is credited with inventing the
> > > Internet). Please refer to his 15 min talk available here:
> > >http://openscriptures.org/2009/03/the-next-web-of-open-linked-data-fo...
> > > All of this is to say that I do not intend that Open Scriptures should
> > > incorporate the German Bible Society's content without due compensation.
> > > Best of regards,
> > > Weston
> > I hope this will change the German Bible Society's perception of the
> > project.
> > Weston
> > On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hey team,
> > > I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She says
> > > that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4 Bible
> > > text for open source projects" and they also request that we remove the
> > > MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know but maybe you should
> > > suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the MorphGNT.)
> > > Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!
> > > What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this issue, to
> > > generate royalties for them while at the same time promote open access to
> > > Scripture. I don't believe that their closed-source licensing policy can
> > > survive given the current technological environment. We need to figure out
> > > how present a shift in policy as a positive change.
> > > What do you think?
> > > Weston
> > > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > > From: Schubert, Beate
> > > Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM
> > > Subject: Open Scriptures
> > > To: Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
> > > Dear Weston,
> > > I understand your Open Scriptures project as being not-for-profit and open
> > > source.
> > > The German Bible Society is a not-for-profit religious foundation. Its
> > > mission, in collaboration with other members of the United Bible Societies,
> > > is to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible translation work in
> > > order to make the Bible available to everybody in their own language.
> > > Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money. Therefore,
> > > according to the standing rules of our foundation, we have to earn money
> > > with our texts to enable further Bible translations worldwide.
> > > Please understand that as a matter of principle we don't license the NA27
> > > or the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects.
> > > Regarding the "MorphGNT with UBS4" on the Open Scriptures website: This is
> > > again a copyright infringement as the basis of the text is the UBS4. We ask
> > > you to remove this text from your website, too, as we are the copyright
> > > holder of the UBS4.
> > > With kind regards,
> > > Beate
> > > Beate Schubert, M.A.
> > > Lizenzabteilung/License Department
> > > *Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society
> > > *
Hi Tommy,
I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. Perhaps the issue is
that the MorphGNT not legally licensed under the Creative Commons license,
or only the parsings and lemmas are CC-licensed but the UBS4 text column is
not. So by taking out the morphological tags, the only thing you are left
with is the copyrighted work.
I also totally agree with you that the real value in the UBS4 is the
critical apparatus, and the text itself they should make open in order to
promote the text and the German Bible Society. You mentioned the ESV, which
I also think is a very good example, especially now since they have made
available study notes to go along with their text; the ESV text is liberally
licensed, but study notes require the purchse of a physical Study Bible. If
the German Bible Society could adopt a similar policy, that would be
wonderful.
I am still waiting to hear back from the German Bible Society regarding your
question about the MorphGNT's relationship to CCAT and the fact that the
MorphGNT text is used on dozens of sites out there (not that this makes it
legal).
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Tommy <keeneto...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I still maintain that the crucial point is the licensing of the
> MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of Creative
> Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative projects are
> protected. That license explicitly allows transformations: "to Remix —
> to adapt the work." So taking out the morphological tags would simply
> be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting product is
> similarly licensed it should be legal
> Of course maintaining that on a discussion list and defending it in
> court are two totally different things.
> It also seems to me that the real value of the GBS books is the
> critical apparatus. That's why people will continue to buy there
> books, even if the text itself is open. So far from cutting into
> profits, an open data model would actually promote the company and the
> text they produce. ESV, of course, would be a classic example.
> On Mar 20, 5:15 pm, Weston Ruter <WestonRu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > NEWS FLASH: zhubert.com has been taken offline
> > I forwarded the email from the German Bible Society to Zack Hubert a
> > few days ago, and he replied to me this afternoon:
> > > Oh. Well that's really bad news.
> > > As I'm using the MorphGNT for zhubert.com, it pretty much sounds like
> > > the project needs to shutdown to protect their copyright.
> > Shortly thereafter he notified me that he has shutdown zhubert.com
> > because of the email from German Bible Society.
> > Clearly we need to resolve these copyright issues.
> > On Mar 18, 10:40 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I just sent the following email to the German Bible Society:
> > > Dear Beate,
> > > > I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to
> promote
> > > > biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the
> Scriptures
> > > > accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting to
> fulfill
> > > > it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically
> interlinking
> > > > manuscripts, translations, morphosyntactic parsings, annotations, and
> other
> > > > related data... Biblical study will be greatly assisted for speakers
> of
> > > > minority languages who haven't benefited from thousands of scholars'
> > > > research in the English and German speaking worlds. For example, if a
> Creole
> > > > translation is semantically linked back to Greek and Hebrew, it can
> benefit
> > > > from the data attached to German and English translations since they
> would
> > > > be all connected together
> > > > I also understand that Biblical research and translation work costs a
> lot
> > > > of money, and I understand (and affirm) the German Bible Society's
> policy to
> > > > charge for the work it produces. I wholeheartedly affirm the DBG's
> mission,
> > > > and I want to support your essential work. One of my core
> philosophies
> > > > regarding the Open Scriptures project is that "the laborer deserves
> his
> > > > wages" (Luke 10:7 ESV). Content owners like the DBG have a right to
> receive
> > > > compensation for their labors, and I want to affirm this right in the
> Open
> > > > Scriptures project.
> > > > Therefore, my hope is that non-free resources such as NA27/UBS4 may
> be
> > > > incorporated into Open Scriptures via either donations, ads, and/or
> > > > subscriptions. The proceeds from these revenue sources can be used to
> > > > compensate the DBG for your scholarship. I want Open Scriptures to be
> an
> > > > avenue by which the DBG may receive financial support to further its
> > > > critical work, while at the same time make it possible for your data
> to
> > > > enter “The next Web of open, linked data” for Scripture. This
> quotation
> > > > comes form a talk by Tim Berners-Lee (who is credited with inventing
> the
> > > > Internet). Please refer to his 15 min talk available here:
> > > > All of this is to say that I do not intend that Open Scriptures
> should
> > > > incorporate the German Bible Society's content without due
> compensation.
> > > > Best of regards,
> > > > Weston
> > > I hope this will change the German Bible Society's perception of the
> > > project.
> > > Weston
> > > On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > > Hey team,
> > > > I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She
> says
> > > > that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4
> Bible
> > > > text for open source projects" and they also request that we remove
> the
> > > > MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know but maybe you
> should
> > > > suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the MorphGNT.)
> > > > Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!
> > > > What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this issue,
> to
> > > > generate royalties for them while at the same time promote open
> access to
> > > > Scripture. I don't believe that their closed-source licensing policy
> can
> > > > survive given the current technological environment. We need to
> figure out
> > > > how present a shift in policy as a positive change.
> > > > What do you think?
> > > > Weston
> > > > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > > > From: Schubert, Beate
> > > > Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM
> > > > Subject: Open Scriptures
> > > > To: Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
> > > > Dear Weston,
> > > > I understand your Open Scriptures project as being not-for-profit and
> open
> > > > source.
> > > > The German Bible Society is a not-for-profit religious foundation.
> Its
> > > > mission, in collaboration with other members of the United Bible
> Societies,
> > > > is to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible translation work
> in
> > > > order to make the Bible available to everybody in their own language.
> > > > Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money.
> Therefore,
> > > > according to the standing rules of our foundation, we have to earn
> money
> > > > with our texts to enable further Bible translations worldwide.
> > > > Please understand that as a matter of principle we don't license the
> NA27
> > > > or the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects.
> > > > Regarding the "MorphGNT with UBS4" on the Open Scriptures website:
> This is
> > > > again a copyright infringement as the basis of the text is the UBS4.
> We ask
> > > > you to remove this text from your website, too, as we are the
> copyright
> > > > holder of the UBS4.
> > > > With kind regards,
> > > > Beate
> > > > Beate Schubert, M.A.
> > > > Lizenzabteilung/License Department
> > > > *Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society
> > > > *
I am beyond sad too!! I am a mom and christian and was following a
quote from Martin Luther that the gospel stays fresh and alive if
studied in the original languages. I was teaching myself Greek and was
using this site to learn how to transliterate and read Greek. I was in
love with what I learned. I learned to trust the Bible through the
original languages such as in Genesis the day had three different
ways of specifically letting us know that it was a literal day, and
the fact that Jesus had phileo love for Lazerus but agape love for
Mary in the chapter on Lazerus's death....amazing how that refutes the
Davinci code to a simple person like me. I am not very smart, but this
gave me the fighting chance to see things a common person could have
never dreamed of. Thanks for the small revelation I was allowed to
have!!!!
On Mar 20, 5:55 pm, richard.goodgr...@gmail.com wrote:
> I am totaly heart broken. I live in Japan and have been using this
> site. Is this what it is all about? Hiding the scriptures from the
> world? I really needed this site. The only one who should have
> copyright of the scriptures is God. This is devestating news for me...
> On Mar 21, 6:15 am, Weston Ruter <WestonRu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > NEWS FLASH: zhubert.com has been taken offline
> > I forwarded the email from the German Bible Society to Zack Hubert a
> > few days ago, and he replied to me this afternoon:
> > > Oh. Well that's really bad news.
> > > As I'm using the MorphGNT for zhubert.com, it pretty much sounds like
> > > the project needs to shutdown to protect their copyright.
> > Shortly thereafter he notified me that he has shutdown zhubert.com
> > because of the email from German Bible Society.
> > Clearly we need to resolve these copyright issues.
> > On Mar 18, 10:40 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I just sent the following email to the German Bible Society:
> > > Dear Beate,
> > > > I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to promote
> > > > biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the Scriptures
> > > > accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting to fulfill
> > > > it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically interlinking
> > > > manuscripts, translations, morphosyntactic parsings, annotations, and other
> > > > related data... Biblical study will be greatly assisted for speakers of
> > > > minority languages who haven't benefited from thousands of scholars'
> > > > research in the English and German speaking worlds. For example, if a Creole
> > > > translation is semantically linked back to Greek and Hebrew, it can benefit
> > > > from the data attached to German and English translations since they would
> > > > be all connected together
> > > > I also understand that Biblical research and translation work costs a lot
> > > > of money, and I understand (and affirm) the German Bible Society's policy to
> > > > charge for the work it produces. I wholeheartedly affirm the DBG's mission,
> > > > and I want to support your essential work. One of my core philosophies
> > > > regarding the Open Scriptures project is that "the laborer deserves his
> > > > wages" (Luke 10:7 ESV). Content owners like the DBG have a right to receive
> > > > compensation for their labors, and I want to affirm this right in the Open
> > > > Scriptures project.
> > > > Therefore, my hope is that non-free resources such as NA27/UBS4 may be
> > > > incorporated into Open Scriptures via either donations, ads, and/or
> > > > subscriptions. The proceeds from these revenue sources can be used to
> > > > compensate the DBG for your scholarship. I want Open Scriptures to be an
> > > > avenue by which the DBG may receive financial support to further its
> > > > critical work, while at the same time make it possible for your data to
> > > > enter “The next Web of open, linked data” for Scripture. This quotation
> > > > comes form a talk by Tim Berners-Lee (who is credited with inventing the
> > > > Internet). Please refer to his 15 min talk available here:
> > > >http://openscriptures.org/2009/03/the-next-web-of-open-linked-data-fo...
> > > > All of this is to say that I do not intend that Open Scriptures should
> > > > incorporate the German Bible Society's content without due compensation.
> > > > Best of regards,
> > > > Weston
> > > I hope this will change the German Bible Society's perception of the
> > > project.
> > > Weston
> > > On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Hey team,
> > > > I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She says
> > > > that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4 Bible
> > > > text for open source projects" and they also request that we remove the
> > > > MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know but maybe you should
> > > > suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the MorphGNT.)
> > > > Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!
> > > > What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this issue, to
> > > > generate royalties for them while at the same time promote open access to
> > > > Scripture. I don't believe that their closed-source licensing policy can
> > > > survive given the current technological environment. We need to figure out
> > > > how present a shift in policy as a positive change.
> > > > What do you think?
> > > > Weston
> > > > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > > > From: Schubert, Beate
> > > > Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM
> > > > Subject: Open Scriptures
> > > > To: Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
> > > > Dear Weston,
> > > > I understand your Open Scriptures project as being not-for-profit and open
> > > > source.
> > > > The German Bible Society is a not-for-profit religious foundation. Its
> > > > mission, in collaboration with other members of the United Bible Societies,
> > > > is to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible translation work in
> > > > order to make the Bible available to everybody in their own language.
> > > > Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money. Therefore,
> > > > according to the standing rules of our foundation, we have to earn money
> > > > with our texts to enable further Bible translations worldwide.
> > > > Please understand that as a matter of principle we don't license the NA27
> > > > or the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects.
> > > > Regarding the "MorphGNT with UBS4" on the Open Scriptures website: This is
> > > > again a copyright infringement as the basis of the text is the UBS4. We ask
> > > > you to remove this text from your website, too, as we are the copyright
> > > > holder of the UBS4.
> > > > With kind regards,
> > > > Beate
> > > > Beate Schubert, M.A.
> > > > Lizenzabteilung/License Department
> > > > *Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society
> > > > *- Hide quoted text -
Friends, I have been using zhubert.com for about a year and a half and
have been incredibly blessed. It's been a great help for me in my
intermediate Greek classes in seminary.
I don't have any copyright or licensing knowledge to add, but I just
wanted to say that I am praying that God would provide a generous
individual or group who would lend their expertise and time to allow a
fantastic resource like zhubert.com to be rebuilt, and that nobody
would try to dip their doughnut in coffee that rightfully belongs to
God and not man.
Thank you for all that you faithful servants have done, are doing, and
will do!
Matt
On Mar 21, 12:51 pm, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Tommy,
> I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. Perhaps the issue is
> that the MorphGNT not legally licensed under the Creative Commons license,
> or only the parsings and lemmas are CC-licensed but the UBS4 text column is
> not. So by taking out the morphological tags, the only thing you are left
> with is the copyrighted work.
> I also totally agree with you that the real value in the UBS4 is the
> critical apparatus, and the text itself they should make open in order to
> promote the text and the German Bible Society. You mentioned the ESV, which
> I also think is a very good example, especially now since they have made
> available study notes to go along with their text; the ESV text is liberally
> licensed, but study notes require the purchse of a physical Study Bible. If
> the German Bible Society could adopt a similar policy, that would be
> wonderful.
> I am still waiting to hear back from the German Bible Society regarding your
> question about the MorphGNT's relationship to CCAT and the fact that the
> MorphGNT text is used on dozens of sites out there (not that this makes it
> legal).
> Weston
> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Tommy <keeneto...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I still maintain that the crucial point is the licensing of the
> > MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of Creative
> > Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative projects are
> > protected. That license explicitly allows transformations: "to Remix —
> > to adapt the work." So taking out the morphological tags would simply
> > be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting product is
> > similarly licensed it should be legal
> > Of course maintaining that on a discussion list and defending it in
> > court are two totally different things.
> > It also seems to me that the real value of the GBS books is the
> > critical apparatus. That's why people will continue to buy there
> > books, even if the text itself is open. So far from cutting into
> > profits, an open data model would actually promote the company and the
> > text they produce. ESV, of course, would be a classic example.
> > On Mar 20, 5:15 pm, Weston Ruter <WestonRu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > NEWS FLASH: zhubert.com has been taken offline
> > > I forwarded the email from the German Bible Society to Zack Hubert a
> > > few days ago, and he replied to me this afternoon:
> > > > Oh. Well that's really bad news.
> > > > As I'm using the MorphGNT for zhubert.com, it pretty much sounds like
> > > > the project needs to shutdown to protect their copyright.
> > > Shortly thereafter he notified me that he has shutdown zhubert.com
> > > because of the email from German Bible Society.
> > > Clearly we need to resolve these copyright issues.
> > > On Mar 18, 10:40 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > I just sent the following email to the German Bible Society:
> > > > Dear Beate,
> > > > > I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to
> > promote
> > > > > biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the
> > Scriptures
> > > > > accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting to
> > fulfill
> > > > > it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically
> > interlinking
> > > > > manuscripts, translations, morphosyntactic parsings, annotations, and
> > other
> > > > > related data... Biblical study will be greatly assisted for speakers
> > of
> > > > > minority languages who haven't benefited from thousands of scholars'
> > > > > research in the English and German speaking worlds. For example, if a
> > Creole
> > > > > translation is semantically linked back to Greek and Hebrew, it can
> > benefit
> > > > > from the data attached to German and English translations since they
> > would
> > > > > be all connected together
> > > > > I also understand that Biblical research and translation work costs a
> > lot
> > > > > of money, and I understand (and affirm) the German Bible Society's
> > policy to
> > > > > charge for the work it produces. I wholeheartedly affirm the DBG's
> > mission,
> > > > > and I want to support your essential work. One of my core
> > philosophies
> > > > > regarding the Open Scriptures project is that "the laborer deserves
> > his
> > > > > wages" (Luke 10:7 ESV). Content owners like the DBG have a right to
> > receive
> > > > > compensation for their labors, and I want to affirm this right in the
> > Open
> > > > > Scriptures project.
> > > > > Therefore, my hope is that non-free resources such as NA27/UBS4 may
> > be
> > > > > incorporated into Open Scriptures via either donations, ads, and/or
> > > > > subscriptions. The proceeds from these revenue sources can be used to
> > > > > compensate the DBG for your scholarship. I want Open Scriptures to be
> > an
> > > > > avenue by which the DBG may receive financial support to further its
> > > > > critical work, while at the same time make it possible for your data
> > to
> > > > > enter “The next Web of open, linked data” for Scripture. This
> > quotation
> > > > > comes form a talk by Tim Berners-Lee (who is credited with inventing
> > the
> > > > > Internet). Please refer to his 15 min talk available here:
> > > > > All of this is to say that I do not intend that Open Scriptures
> > should
> > > > > incorporate the German Bible Society's content without due
> > compensation.
> > > > > Best of regards,
> > > > > Weston
> > > > I hope this will change the German Bible Society's perception of the
> > > > project.
> > > > Weston
> > > > On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > > > Hey team,
> > > > > I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She
> > says
> > > > > that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4
> > Bible
> > > > > text for open source projects" and they also request that we remove
> > the
> > > > > MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know but maybe you
> > should
> > > > > suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the MorphGNT.)
> > > > > Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!
> > > > > What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this issue,
> > to
> > > > > generate royalties for them while at the same time promote open
> > access to
> > > > > Scripture. I don't believe that their closed-source licensing policy
> > can
> > > > > survive given the current technological environment. We need to
> > figure out
> > > > > how present a shift in policy as a positive change.
> > > > > What do you think?
> > > > > Weston
> > > > > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > > > > From: Schubert, Beate
> > > > > Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM
> > > > > Subject: Open Scriptures
> > > > > To: Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
> > > > > Dear Weston,
> > > > > I understand your Open Scriptures project as being not-for-profit and
> > open
> > > > > source.
> > > > > The German Bible Society is a not-for-profit religious foundation.
> > Its
> > > > > mission, in collaboration with other members of the United Bible
> > Societies,
> > > > > is to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible translation work
> > in
> > > > > order to make the Bible available to everybody in their own language.
> > > > > Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money.
> > Therefore,
> > > > > according to the standing rules of our foundation, we have to earn
> > money
> > > > > with our texts to enable further Bible translations worldwide.
> > > > > Please understand that as a matter of principle we don't license the
> > NA27
> > > > > or the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects.
> > > > > Regarding the "MorphGNT with UBS4" on the Open Scriptures website:
> > This is
> > > > > again a copyright infringement as the basis of the text is the UBS4.
> > We ask
> > > > > you to remove this text from your website, too, as we are the
> > copyright
> > > > > holder of the UBS4.
> > > > > With kind regards,
> > > > > Beate
> > > > > Beate Schubert, M.A.
> > > > > Lizenzabteilung/License Department
> > > > > *Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society
> > > > > *
redfis...@hotmail.com wrote:
>Friends, I have been using zhubert.com for about a year and a half and
>have been incredibly blessed. It's been a great help for me in my
>intermediate Greek classes in seminary.
>I don't have any copyright or licensing knowledge to add, but I just
>wanted to say that I am praying that God would provide a generous
>individual or group who would lend their expertise and time to allow a
>fantastic resource like zhubert.com to be rebuilt, and that nobody
>would try to dip their doughnut in coffee that rightfully belongs to
>God and not man.
>Thank you for all that you faithful servants have done, are doing, and
>will do!
>Matt
>On Mar 21, 12:51 pm, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>Hi Tommy,
>>I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. Perhaps the issue is
>>that the MorphGNT not legally licensed under the Creative Commons license,
>>or only the parsings and lemmas are CC-licensed but the UBS4 text column is
>>not. So by taking out the morphological tags, the only thing you are left
>>with is the copyrighted work.
>>I also totally agree with you that the real value in the UBS4 is the
>>critical apparatus, and the text itself they should make open in order to
>>promote the text and the German Bible Society. You mentioned the ESV, which
>>I also think is a very good example, especially now since they have made
>>available study notes to go along with their text; the ESV text is liberally
>>licensed, but study notes require the purchse of a physical Study Bible. If
>>the German Bible Society could adopt a similar policy, that would be
>>wonderful.
>>I am still waiting to hear back from the German Bible Society regarding your
>>question about the MorphGNT's relationship to CCAT and the fact that the
>>MorphGNT text is used on dozens of sites out there (not that this makes it
>>legal).
>>Weston
>>On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Tommy <keeneto...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>I still maintain that the crucial point is the licensing of the
>>>MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of Creative
>>>Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative projects are
>>>protected. That license explicitly allows transformations: "to Remix —
>>>to adapt the work." So taking out the morphological tags would simply
>>>be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting product is
>>>similarly licensed it should be legal
>>>Of course maintaining that on a discussion list and defending it in
>>>court are two totally different things.
>>>It also seems to me that the real value of the GBS books is the
>>>critical apparatus. That's why people will continue to buy there
>>>books, even if the text itself is open. So far from cutting into
>>>profits, an open data model would actually promote the company and the
>>>text they produce. ESV, of course, would be a classic example.
>>>On Mar 20, 5:15 pm, Weston Ruter <WestonRu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>NEWS FLASH: zhubert.com has been taken offline
>>>>I forwarded the email from the German Bible Society to Zack Hubert a
>>>>few days ago, and he replied to me this afternoon:
>>>>>Oh. Well that's really bad news.
>>>>>As I'm using the MorphGNT for zhubert.com, it pretty much sounds like
>>>>>the project needs to shutdown to protect their copyright.
>>>>Shortly thereafter he notified me that he has shutdown zhubert.com
>>>>because of the email from German Bible Society.
>>>>Clearly we need to resolve these copyright issues.
>>>>On Mar 18, 10:40 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>I just sent the following email to the German Bible Society:
>>>>>Dear Beate,
>>>>>>I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to
>>>promote
>>>>>>biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the
>>>Scriptures
>>>>>>accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting to
>>>fulfill
>>>>>>it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically
>>>interlinking
>>>>>>manuscripts, translations, morphosyntactic parsings, annotations, and
>>>other
>>>>>>related data... Biblical study will be greatly assisted for speakers
>>>of
>>>>>>minority languages who haven't benefited from thousands of scholars'
>>>>>>research in the English and German speaking worlds. For example, if a
>>>Creole
>>>>>>translation is semantically linked back to Greek and Hebrew, it can
>>>benefit
>>>>>>from the data attached to German and English translations since they
>>>would
>>>>>>be all connected together
>>>>>>I also understand that Biblical research and translation work costs a
>>>lot
>>>>>>of money, and I understand (and affirm) the German Bible Society's
>>>policy to
>>>>>>charge for the work it produces. I wholeheartedly affirm the DBG's
>>>mission,
>>>>>>and I want to support your essential work. One of my core
>>>philosophies
>>>>>>regarding the Open Scriptures project is that "the laborer deserves
>>>his
>>>>>>wages" (Luke 10:7 ESV). Content owners like the DBG have a right to
>>>receive
>>>>>>compensation for their labors, and I want to affirm this right in the
>>>Open
>>>>>>Scriptures project.
>>>>>>Therefore, my hope is that non-free resources such as NA27/UBS4 may
>>>be
>>>>>>incorporated into Open Scriptures via either donations, ads, and/or
>>>>>>subscriptions. The proceeds from these revenue sources can be used to
>>>>>>compensate the DBG for your scholarship. I want Open Scriptures to be
>>>an
>>>>>>avenue by which the DBG may receive financial support to further its
>>>>>>critical work, while at the same time make it possible for your data
>>>to
>>>>>>enter “The next Web of open, linked data” for Scripture. This
>>>quotation
>>>>>>comes form a talk by Tim Berners-Lee (who is credited with inventing
>>>the
>>>>>>Internet). Please refer to his 15 min talk available here:
> Thank you for your message that my colleague Beate Schubert forwarded to
> me. We acknowledge that you removed the MorphGNT form openscriptures.org.
> Both, the Greek Bible text and the critical apparatus of this edition are
> copyright protected. Thus publication and distribution is prohibited without
> permission of the copyright holder, the German Bible Society.
> As Beate Schubert already mentioned the German Bible Society does not
> license the Greek New Testament for online use as a matter of principle.
> This does not only apply to your but to any website. However the Greek Bible
> text is available for free in our Bible portal www.bibelwissenschaft.de.
> Thus, everybody who wants to read the Greek Bible text has the opportunity
> to do it there.
> Dr. Bertram Salzmann - New Media Director
> German Bible Society - www.scholarly-bibles.com > Balinger Str. 31 - D-70567 Stuttgart/Germany
Obviously, I'm not very satisfied with their response. :-(
First of all, Beate Schubert never said they don't license the text for any
online use, but rather that they don't license the text for open source
projects (that is, I assumed, projects that don't generate revenue). Beate's
entire argument as I understood it was that Biblical research costs a lot of
money and that open source projects don't generate compensation, and so that
is why they don't allow open source usage of the text. In my email to them,
I was explaining that I want to support the work of the German Bible Society
by means of revenue generated from ads, donations, and/or subscriptions (for
access to their text). But Bertram says they disallow all online use of the
text, apparently even those that generate revenue for them. So Beate's
rationale isn't apparently valid... so what is the principle behind this
decision? The text is already all throughout the Internet and anyone can get
access to it, so it's not like they are protecting the text itself from
distribution (since it's already available via their website).
Lastly, Bertram's suggestion that we just go to their website to view the
text completely disregards the entire rationale for why we would need the
text (that is, semantic integration with other texts). I explained to Beate:
Open Scriptures can be an intermediary between application developers and
> content owners. The idea is for Open Scriptures to be a platform upon which
> developers can build applications of scripture while at the same time give
> content owners a distribution channel and revenue stream.
(I know not all of us are too keen on this idea, but I wanted to present it
as a possibility to the German Bible Society.) I want to send a reply to
Bertram that asks about the true principle behind this decision, and to get
a more adequate explanation. If their rules regarding the usage of their
text are this rigid, then obviously it's time for them to rewrite them. Do
any of you have additional things you think I should include in our
response?
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Tommy,
> I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. Perhaps the issue
> is that the MorphGNT not legally licensed under the Creative Commons
> license, or only the parsings and lemmas are CC-licensed but the UBS4 text
> column is not. So by taking out the morphological tags, the only thing you
> are left with is the copyrighted work.
> I also totally agree with you that the real value in the UBS4 is the
> critical apparatus, and the text itself they should make open in order to
> promote the text and the German Bible Society. You mentioned the ESV, which
> I also think is a very good example, especially now since they have made
> available study notes to go along with their text; the ESV text is liberally
> licensed, but study notes require the purchse of a physical Study Bible. If
> the German Bible Society could adopt a similar policy, that would be
> wonderful.
> I am still waiting to hear back from the German Bible Society regarding
> your question about the MorphGNT's relationship to CCAT and the fact that
> the MorphGNT text is used on dozens of sites out there (not that this makes
> it legal).
> Weston
> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Tommy <keeneto...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I still maintain that the crucial point is the licensing of the
>> MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of Creative
>> Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative projects are
>> protected. That license explicitly allows transformations: "to Remix —
>> to adapt the work." So taking out the morphological tags would simply
>> be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting product is
>> similarly licensed it should be legal
>> Of course maintaining that on a discussion list and defending it in
>> court are two totally different things.
>> It also seems to me that the real value of the GBS books is the
>> critical apparatus. That's why people will continue to buy there
>> books, even if the text itself is open. So far from cutting into
>> profits, an open data model would actually promote the company and the
>> text they produce. ESV, of course, would be a classic example.
>> On Mar 20, 5:15 pm, Weston Ruter <WestonRu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > NEWS FLASH: zhubert.com has been taken offline
>> > I forwarded the email from the German Bible Society to Zack Hubert a
>> > few days ago, and he replied to me this afternoon:
>> > > Oh. Well that's really bad news.
>> > > As I'm using the MorphGNT for zhubert.com, it pretty much sounds like
>> > > the project needs to shutdown to protect their copyright.
>> > Shortly thereafter he notified me that he has shutdown zhubert.com
>> > because of the email from German Bible Society.
>> > Clearly we need to resolve these copyright issues.
>> > On Mar 18, 10:40 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > I just sent the following email to the German Bible Society:
>> > > Dear Beate,
>> > > > I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to
>> promote
>> > > > biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the
>> Scriptures
>> > > > accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting to
>> fulfill
>> > > > it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically
>> interlinking
>> > > > manuscripts, translations, morphosyntactic parsings, annotations,
>> and other
>> > > > related data... Biblical study will be greatly assisted for speakers
>> of
>> > > > minority languages who haven't benefited from thousands of scholars'
>> > > > research in the English and German speaking worlds. For example, if
>> a Creole
>> > > > translation is semantically linked back to Greek and Hebrew, it can
>> benefit
>> > > > from the data attached to German and English translations since they
>> would
>> > > > be all connected together
>> > > > I also understand that Biblical research and translation work costs
>> a lot
>> > > > of money, and I understand (and affirm) the German Bible Society's
>> policy to
>> > > > charge for the work it produces. I wholeheartedly affirm the DBG's
>> mission,
>> > > > and I want to support your essential work. One of my core
>> philosophies
>> > > > regarding the Open Scriptures project is that "the laborer deserves
>> his
>> > > > wages" (Luke 10:7 ESV). Content owners like the DBG have a right to
>> receive
>> > > > compensation for their labors, and I want to affirm this right in
>> the Open
>> > > > Scriptures project.
>> > > > Therefore, my hope is that non-free resources such as NA27/UBS4 may
>> be
>> > > > incorporated into Open Scriptures via either donations, ads, and/or
>> > > > subscriptions. The proceeds from these revenue sources can be used
>> to
>> > > > compensate the DBG for your scholarship. I want Open Scriptures to
>> be an
>> > > > avenue by which the DBG may receive financial support to further its
>> > > > critical work, while at the same time make it possible for your data
>> to
>> > > > enter “The next Web of open, linked data” for Scripture. This
>> quotation
>> > > > comes form a talk by Tim Berners-Lee (who is credited with inventing
>> the
>> > > > Internet). Please refer to his 15 min talk available here:
>> > > > All of this is to say that I do not intend that Open Scriptures
>> should
>> > > > incorporate the German Bible Society's content without due
>> compensation.
>> > > > Best of regards,
>> > > > Weston
>> > > I hope this will change the German Bible Society's perception of the
>> > > project.
>> > > Weston
>> > > On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > > > Hey team,
>> > > > I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She
>> says
>> > > > that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4
>> Bible
>> > > > text for open source projects" and they also request that we remove
>> the
>> > > > MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know but maybe you
>> should
>> > > > suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the MorphGNT.)
>> > > > Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!
>> > > > What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this
>> issue, to
>> > > > generate royalties for them while at the same time promote
If anybody from the German Bible Society is at BibleTech 2009, ask them for a clarification.
jonathon
-- The court in the southern city of Shenzhen on Wednesday sentenced 11 people to jail terms of up to six-and-a-half years for making high-quality counterfeit software that was sold in 36 countries, Microsoft said in a statement.
The first clue that genuine Microsoft products were not being offered, was that it was "high quality software".
> I still maintain that the crucial point is the licensing of the > MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of Creative > Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative projects are > protected. That license explicitly allows transformations: "to Remix — > to adapt the work." So taking out the morphological tags would simply > be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting product is > similarly licensed it should be legal
Well, to the extent that you can recreate the UBS text from MorphGNT, it calls in to question whether MorphGNT is legally clean or a derivative work.
I have permission to modify and redistribute CCAT's text but that only works to the extent that CCAT had the right to grant me that in the first place.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, though, back in the mid 90s, CCAT had both a morphological analysis and the UBS3 text on their site and they took down only the latter at the request of, I presume, the GBS.
As I've also mentioned, though, I've long planned to better separate out the analysis from the particular text, mostly as a way of reusing the analysis for other texts but with the added advantage of more cleanly separating out the UBS text.
But it still raises questions. Even if I had a text-independent analysis with each unique form keyed of, say, an integer id, I'd want to provide a mapping from a text to that analysis, e.g. "the 37th word in John's Gospel (NA/UBS text) is unique form #285 in MorphGNT". But this mapping could still be used by people to reconstruct the text.
Imagine I have a mapping file that has 138,019 lines that look like this:
04 0037 285
where 04 is the book number, 0037 is the word offset and 285 is the unique form key.
Is this a derivative work of UBS, subject to GBS's copyright?
I think my favorite part is this, "Is that not crazy? If I'm right,
then you can state it another way: the goal of the UBS is to copyright
the *original* text of Scripture."
Jesse
On Mar 26, 9:24 am, James Tauber <jtau...@jtauber.com> wrote:
> > I still maintain that the crucial point is the licensing of the
> > MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of Creative
> > Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative projects are
> > protected. That license explicitly allows transformations: "to Remix —
> > to adapt the work." So taking out the morphological tags would simply
> > be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting product is
> > similarly licensed it should be legal
> Well, to the extent that you can recreate the UBS text from MorphGNT,
> it calls in to question whether MorphGNT is legally clean or a
> derivative work.
> I have permission to modify and redistribute CCAT's text but that only
> works to the extent that CCAT had the right to grant me that in the
> first place.
> As I've mentioned elsewhere, though, back in the mid 90s, CCAT had
> both a morphological analysis and the UBS3 text on their site and they
> took down only the latter at the request of, I presume, the GBS.
> As I've also mentioned, though, I've long planned to better separate
> out the analysis from the particular text, mostly as a way of reusing
> the analysis for other texts but with the added advantage of more
> cleanly separating out the UBS text.
> But it still raises questions. Even if I had a text-independent
> analysis with each unique form keyed of, say, an integer id, I'd want
> to provide a mapping from a text to that analysis, e.g. "the 37th word
> in John's Gospel (NA/UBS text) is unique form #285 in MorphGNT". But
> this mapping could still be used by people to reconstruct the text.
> Imagine I have a mapping file that has 138,019 lines that look like
> this:
> 04 0037 285
> where 04 is the book number, 0037 is the word offset and 285 is the
> unique form key.
> Is this a derivative work of UBS, subject to GBS's copyright?
Taking the devil's advocacy, I would presume it was, because it is just a way of encoding the layout of the particular rendition of the NT which UBS4 is. Looking at that encoding scheme, wouldn't it be more flexible to use: book number | chapter number | verse number | word offset?
That way, the various verse differences for the codices could be stored in a way that tracks them more easily -- at the verse level rather than the word level. Isn't it true there are not really that many differences? It seems to me that if the morphGNT were to be encoded this way, with encoding also for variances, that we could obtain a text rapidly from the morphGNT as it is now for any of the other codices and avoid the copyright problems.
I've been looking at zhubert.com analytically for a while now and I don't see any great complexity issues for knocking off a clone. The most complex part is indeed the morphGNT. With some form of it in another codex we could get the site back up soon.
Darrell
Ζῆ Χριστός! יְבָרֶכְךָ יָהְוֶה
--- On Thu, 3/26/09, James Tauber <jtau...@jtauber.com> wrote:
> From: James Tauber <jtau...@jtauber.com>
> Subject: Re: Licensing and the German Bible Society
> To: open-scriptures@googlegroups.com
> Date: Thursday, March 26, 2009, 6:24 AM
> On Mar 21, 2009, at 10:55 AM, Tommy wrote:
> > I still maintain that the crucial point is the
> licensing of the
> > MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of
> Creative
> > Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative
> projects are
> > protected. That license explicitly allows
> transformations: "to Remix —
> > to adapt the work." So taking out the
> morphological tags would simply
> > be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting
> product is
> > similarly licensed it should be legal
> Well, to the extent that you can recreate the UBS text from
> MorphGNT,
> it calls in to question whether MorphGNT is legally clean
> or a
> derivative work.
> I have permission to modify and redistribute CCAT's
> text but that only
> works to the extent that CCAT had the right to grant me
> that in the
> first place.
> As I've mentioned elsewhere, though, back in the mid
> 90s, CCAT had
> both a morphological analysis and the UBS3 text on their
> site and they
> took down only the latter at the request of, I presume, the
> GBS.
> As I've also mentioned, though, I've long planned
> to better separate
> out the analysis from the particular text, mostly as a way
> of reusing
> the analysis for other texts but with the added advantage
> of more
> cleanly separating out the UBS text.
> But it still raises questions. Even if I had a
> text-independent
> analysis with each unique form keyed of, say, an integer
> id, I'd want
> to provide a mapping from a text to that analysis, e.g.
> "the 37th word
> in John's Gospel (NA/UBS text) is unique form #285 in
> MorphGNT". But
> this mapping could still be used by people to reconstruct
> the text.
> Imagine I have a mapping file that has 138,019 lines that
> look like
> this:
> 04 0037 285
> where 04 is the book number, 0037 is the word offset and
> 285 is the
> unique form key.
> Is this a derivative work of UBS, subject to GBS's
> copyright?
I appreciate the need for the German Bible Society to be compensated
for the the work they put into their edition of the Greek New
Testament, but I found their response offensive.
"However the Greek Bible text is available for free in our Bible
portal www.bibelwissenschaft.de. Thus, everybody who wants to read the
Greek Bible text has the opportunity to do it there."
First of all, in order to use this site, one must understand German.
Secondly, it doesn't have nearly the research features that MorphGNT
had. Try finding all the places where a particular form of a lexical
root appear in the New Testament. As far as I can tell, their site
doesn't offer that.
Most people didn't come to MorphGNT to simply read the Greek New
Testament. There are plenty of places online where one can do that.
Or just spend $20 and buy a printed version. I used zhubert.com
because it was an amazing research tool. It's too bad the German
Bible Society isn't interested in collaborating with others to make
this gift available to more people.
Steve Keiser
On Mar 25, 12:02 pm, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Thank you for your message that my colleague Beate Schubert forwarded to
> > me. We acknowledge that you removed the MorphGNT form openscriptures.org.
> > Both, the Greek Bible text and the critical apparatus of this edition are
> > copyright protected. Thus publication and distribution is prohibited without
> > permission of the copyright holder, the German Bible Society.
> > As Beate Schubert already mentioned the German Bible Society does not
> > license the Greek New Testament for online use as a matter of principle.
> > This does not only apply to your but to any website. However the Greek Bible
> > text is available for free in our Bible portalwww.bibelwissenschaft.de.
> > Thus, everybody who wants to read the Greek Bible text has the opportunity
> > to do it there.
> > Dr. Bertram Salzmann - New Media Director
> > German Bible Society -www.scholarly-bibles.com > > Balinger Str. 31 - D-70567 Stuttgart/Germany
> Obviously, I'm not very satisfied with their response. :-(
> First of all, Beate Schubert never said they don't license the text for any
> online use, but rather that they don't license the text for open source
> projects (that is, I assumed, projects that don't generate revenue). Beate's
> entire argument as I understood it was that Biblical research costs a lot of
> money and that open source projects don't generate compensation, and so that
> is why they don't allow open source usage of the text. In my email to them,
> I was explaining that I want to support the work of the German Bible Society
> by means of revenue generated from ads, donations, and/or subscriptions (for
> access to their text). But Bertram says they disallow all online use of the
> text, apparently even those that generate revenue for them. So Beate's
> rationale isn't apparently valid... so what is the principle behind this
> decision? The text is already all throughout the Internet and anyone can get
> access to it, so it's not like they are protecting the text itself from
> distribution (since it's already available via their website).
> Lastly, Bertram's suggestion that we just go to their website to view the
> text completely disregards the entire rationale for why we would need the
> text (that is, semantic integration with other texts). I explained to Beate:
> Open Scriptures can be an intermediary between application developers and
> > content owners. The idea is for Open Scriptures to be a platform upon which
> > developers can build applications of scripture while at the same time give
> > content owners a distribution channel and revenue stream.
> (I know not all of us are too keen on this idea, but I wanted to present it
> as a possibility to the German Bible Society.) I want to send a reply to
> Bertram that asks about the true principle behind this decision, and to get
> a more adequate explanation. If their rules regarding the usage of their
> text are this rigid, then obviously it's time for them to rewrite them. Do
> any of you have additional things you think I should include in our
> response?
> I also need to cool down a bit.
> Lord please give us patience and wisdom.
> Weston
> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi Tommy,
> > I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. Perhaps the issue
> > is that the MorphGNT not legally licensed under the Creative Commons
> > license, or only the parsings and lemmas are CC-licensed but the UBS4 text
> > column is not. So by taking out the morphological tags, the only thing you
> > are left with is the copyrighted work.
> > I also totally agree with you that the real value in the UBS4 is the
> > critical apparatus, and the text itself they should make open in order to
> > promote the text and the German Bible Society. You mentioned the ESV, which
> > I also think is a very good example, especially now since they have made
> > available study notes to go along with their text; the ESV text is liberally
> > licensed, but study notes require the purchse of a physical Study Bible. If
> > the German Bible Society could adopt a similar policy, that would be
> > wonderful.
> > I am still waiting to hear back from the German Bible Society regarding
> > your question about the MorphGNT's relationship to CCAT and the fact that
> > the MorphGNT text is used on dozens of sites out there (not that this makes
> > it legal).
> > Weston
> > On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Tommy <keeneto...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I still maintain that the crucial point is the licensing of the
> >> MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of Creative
> >> Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative projects are
> >> protected. That license explicitly allows transformations: "to Remix —
> >> to adapt the work." So taking out the morphological tags would simply
> >> be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting product is
> >> similarly licensed it should be legal
> >> Of course maintaining that on a discussion list and defending it in
> >> court are two totally different things.
> >> It also seems to me that the real value of the GBS books is the
> >> critical apparatus. That's why people will continue to buy there
> >> books, even if the text itself is open. So far from cutting into
> >> profits, an open data model would actually promote the company and the
> >> text they produce. ESV, of course, would be a classic example.
> >> On Mar 20, 5:15 pm, Weston Ruter <WestonRu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > NEWS FLASH: zhubert.com has been taken offline
> >> > I forwarded the email from the German Bible Society to Zack Hubert a
> >> > few days ago, and he replied to me this afternoon:
> >> > > Oh. Well that's really bad news.
> >> > > As I'm using the MorphGNT for zhubert.com, it pretty much sounds like
> >> > > the project needs to shutdown to protect their copyright.
> >> > Shortly thereafter he notified me that he has shutdown zhubert.com
> >> > because of the email from German Bible Society.
> >> > Clearly we need to resolve these copyright issues.
> >> > On Mar 18, 10:40 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > > I just sent the following email to the German Bible Society:
> >> > > Dear Beate,
> >> > > > I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to
> >> promote
> >> > > > biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the
> >> Scriptures
> >> > > > accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting to
> >> fulfill
> >> > > > it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically
> >> interlinking
> >> > > > manuscripts, translations, morphosyntactic parsings, annotations,
> >> and other
> >> > > > related data... Biblical study will be greatly assisted for speakers
> >> of
> >> > > > minority languages who haven't benefited from thousands of scholars'
> >> > > > research in the English and German speaking worlds. For example, if
> >> a Creole
> >> > > > translation is semantically linked back to Greek and Hebrew, it can
> >> benefit
> >> > > > from the data attached to German and English translations since they
> >> would
> >> > > > be all connected together
> >> > > > I also understand that Biblical research and translation work costs
> >> a lot
> >> > > > of money, and I understand (and affirm) the German Bible Society's
> >> policy to
> >> > > > charge for the work it produces. I wholeheartedly affirm the DBG's
> >> mission,
> >> > > > and I want to support your essential work. One of my core
> >> philosophies
> >> > > > regarding the Open Scriptures project is that "the laborer deserves
> >> his
> >> > > > wages" (Luke 10:7 ESV). Content owners like the DBG have a right to
> >> receive
> >> > > > compensation for their labors, and I want to affirm this right in
> >> the Open
> >> > > > Scriptures project.
> >> > > > Therefore, my hope is that non-free resources such as NA27/UBS4 may
> >> be
> >> > > > incorporated into Open Scriptures via either donations, ads, and/or
> >> > > > subscriptions. The proceeds from these revenue sources can be used
> >> to
> >> > > > compensate the DBG for your scholarship. I want Open Scriptures to
> >> be an
> >> > > > avenue by which the DBG may receive financial support to further its
> >> > > > critical work, while at the same time make it possible for your data
> >> to
> >> > > > enter “The next Web of open,
I have been in communication with the German Bible Society and am working with them on both legal and technologically ways for me to continue to make MorphGNT available in some form without enabling people to violate the GBS copyrights with it.
People here probably won't like it, but the solution will likely be a version of MorphGNT that would require you to have the UBS GNT already in order to do mapping from that text to my analysis. In fact, I will likely provide a Python script that regenerates the current MorphGNT format as long as you have (1) a (hopefully legal) list of the 138,019 words in the UBS GNT in order and (2) the forthcoming version of MorphGNT.
One advantage is this will speed up my intended work to make the analysis mappable from multiple texts.
Hey James,
Here's another idea. To get around the UBS4, we could associate your
parsings with the merging of all available public domain MSS, that is, the
unified manuscript used the Open Scriptures infrastructure. The unified
manuscript contains all of the attested readings of all of the MSS, and so
it is almost a complete superset of the words found in the UBS4. I did a
comparison of all the UBS4 words in 1 John compared with a merging of TR
(1551), TR (1894), MT/Byzantine, W/H, and Tischendorf... and there were only
two words in 1 John that were not also attested to in the other MSS.
If the UBS4 were also linked into the UMS (unified manuscript), then you
distribute a version of the MorphGNT that contains only the readings
attested to in the non-UBS4 manuscript editions (virtually everything).
On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 6:30 AM, James Tauber <jtau...@jtauber.com> wrote:
> I have been in communication with the German Bible Society and am
> working with them on both legal and technologically ways for me to
> continue to make MorphGNT available in some form without enabling
> people to violate the GBS copyrights with it.
> People here probably won't like it, but the solution will likely be a
> version of MorphGNT that would require you to have the UBS GNT already
> in order to do mapping from that text to my analysis. In fact, I will
> likely provide a Python script that regenerates the current MorphGNT
> format as long as you have (1) a (hopefully legal) list of the 138,019
> words in the UBS GNT in order and (2) the forthcoming version of
> MorphGNT.
> One advantage is this will speed up my intended work to make the
> analysis mappable from multiple texts.
I was using Zack's site to study God's Word for myself and my family.
I helped out financially when I thought there was a need, and would
have been happy to continue to do so. Would it be acceptable for each
MorphGNT user to have an account and pay an annual fee so the GBS
could receive revenue?
Thanks!
Glenn
On Mar 18, 9:46 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey team,
> I got an email back from the German Bible Society. It is grave. She says
> that as "a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or the UBS4 Bible
> text for open source projects" and they also request that we remove the
> MorphGNT citing their copyright. (Tommy, I don't know but maybe you should
> suspend downloads of your E-Book based on the MorphGNT.)
> Obviously the MorphGNT is an absolutely vital resource!
> What are we going to do? We have to find some solution to this issue, to
> generate royalties for them while at the same time promote open access to
> Scripture. I don't believe that their closed-source licensing policy can
> survive given the current technological environment. We need to figure out
> how present a shift in policy as a positive change.
> What do you think?
> Weston
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Schubert, Beate
> Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 3:57 AM
> Subject: Open Scriptures
> To: Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>
> Dear Weston,
> I understand your Open Scriptures project as being not-for-profit and open
> source.
> The German Bible Society is a not-for-profit religious foundation. Its
> mission, in collaboration with other members of the United Bible Societies,
> is to promote biblical research and worldwide Bible translation work in
> order to make the Bible available to everybody in their own language.
> Biblical research and translation work costs a lot of money. Therefore,
> according to the standing rules of our foundation, we have to earn money
> with our texts to enable further Bible translations worldwide.
> Please understand that as a matter of principle we don't license the NA27 or
> the UBS4 Bible text for open source projects.
> Regarding the "MorphGNT with UBS4" on the Open Scriptures website: This is
> again a copyright infringement as the basis of the text is the UBS4. We ask
> you to remove this text from your website, too, as we are the copyright
> holder of the UBS4.
> With kind regards,
> Beate
> Beate Schubert, M.A.
> Lizenzabteilung/License Department
> *Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft/German Bible Society
> *- Hide quoted text -
Hello everyone,
I've been giving a lot of thought, obviously, to the issue of copyright, and
I have been getting the advice of people much wiser than me. I and many in
this group are very new to the complexities of copyright and scriptural
texts, and thus it is easy for us to draw (potentially incorrect)
conclusions because we have limited information. It is all too easy for me,
at least, to let emotional reactions determine my responses, and I am wrong
to do so. The bottom-line is that the copyright situation with the German
Bible Society (GBS) and other content owners is not simply a matter of
money, and it is NOT about any attempt to keep God's word out of peoples'
hands (this is the opposite of GBS's stated mission). We cannot make those
accusations. May God bless GBS.
With all of that said, in this group (and I am speaking to myself), let us
seek to be conciliatory and peaceable, and to not jump to conclusions based
on our limited knowledge. Let us think before we speak, checking our
attitudes and feelings before we press the send button. And furthermore, let
us in gestures of humility and with grace, approach content owners' and seek
to truly understand the reasons behind their policies, many of which we
clearly do not understand.
"Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. For
human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness." James 1:19a-20 NET
Thanks for your understanding and collaboration, for your passion for the
Scriptures, and your enthusiasm to make them accessible via the Web.
>> Thank you for your message that my colleague Beate Schubert forwarded to
>> me. We acknowledge that you removed the MorphGNT form openscriptures.org.
>> Both, the Greek Bible text and the critical apparatus of this edition are
>> copyright protected. Thus publication and distribution is prohibited without
>> permission of the copyright holder, the German Bible Society.
>> As Beate Schubert already mentioned the German Bible Society does not
>> license the Greek New Testament for online use as a matter of principle.
>> This does not only apply to your but to any website. However the Greek Bible
>> text is available for free in our Bible portal www.bibelwissenschaft.de.
>> Thus, everybody who wants to read the Greek Bible text has the opportunity
>> to do it there.
>> Dr. Bertram Salzmann - New Media Director
>> German Bible Society - www.scholarly-bibles.com >> Balinger Str. 31 - D-70567 Stuttgart/Germany
> Obviously, I'm not very satisfied with their response. :-(
> First of all, Beate Schubert never said they don't license the text for any
> online use, but rather that they don't license the text for open source
> projects (that is, I assumed, projects that don't generate revenue). Beate's
> entire argument as I understood it was that Biblical research costs a lot of
> money and that open source projects don't generate compensation, and so that
> is why they don't allow open source usage of the text. In my email to them,
> I was explaining that I want to support the work of the German Bible Society
> by means of revenue generated from ads, donations, and/or subscriptions (for
> access to their text). But Bertram says they disallow all online use of the
> text, apparently even those that generate revenue for them. So Beate's
> rationale isn't apparently valid... so what is the principle behind this
> decision? The text is already all throughout the Internet and anyone can get
> access to it, so it's not like they are protecting the text itself from
> distribution (since it's already available via their website).
> Lastly, Bertram's suggestion that we just go to their website to view the
> text completely disregards the entire rationale for why we would need the
> text (that is, semantic integration with other texts). I explained to Beate:
> Open Scriptures can be an intermediary between application developers and
>> content owners. The idea is for Open Scriptures to be a platform upon which
>> developers can build applications of scripture while at the same time give
>> content owners a distribution channel and revenue stream.
> (I know not all of us are too keen on this idea, but I wanted to present it
> as a possibility to the German Bible Society.) I want to send a reply to
> Bertram that asks about the true principle behind this decision, and to get
> a more adequate explanation. If their rules regarding the usage of their
> text are this rigid, then obviously it's time for them to rewrite them. Do
> any of you have additional things you think I should include in our
> response?
> I also need to cool down a bit.
> Lord please give us patience and wisdom.
> Weston
> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>wrote:
>> Hi Tommy,
>> I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. Perhaps the issue
>> is that the MorphGNT not legally licensed under the Creative Commons
>> license, or only the parsings and lemmas are CC-licensed but the UBS4 text
>> column is not. So by taking out the morphological tags, the only thing you
>> are left with is the copyrighted work.
>> I also totally agree with you that the real value in the UBS4 is the
>> critical apparatus, and the text itself they should make open in order to
>> promote the text and the German Bible Society. You mentioned the ESV, which
>> I also think is a very good example, especially now since they have made
>> available study notes to go along with their text; the ESV text is liberally
>> licensed, but study notes require the purchse of a physical Study Bible. If
>> the German Bible Society could adopt a similar policy, that would be
>> wonderful.
>> I am still waiting to hear back from the German Bible Society regarding
>> your question about the MorphGNT's relationship to CCAT and the fact that
>> the MorphGNT text is used on dozens of sites out there (not that this makes
>> it legal).
>> Weston
>> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Tommy <keeneto...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I still maintain that the crucial point is the licensing of the
>>> MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of Creative
>>> Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative projects are
>>> protected. That license explicitly allows transformations: "to Remix —
>>> to adapt the work." So taking out the morphological tags would simply
>>> be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting product is
>>> similarly licensed it should be legal
>>> Of course maintaining that on a discussion list and defending it in
>>> court are two totally different things.
>>> It also seems to me that the real value of the GBS books is the
>>> critical apparatus. That's why people will continue to buy there
>>> books, even if the text itself is open. So far from cutting into
>>> profits, an open data model would actually promote the company and the
>>> text they produce. ESV, of course, would be a classic example.
>>> On Mar 20, 5:15 pm, Weston Ruter <WestonRu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > NEWS FLASH: zhubert.com has been taken offline
>>> > I forwarded the email from the German Bible Society to Zack Hubert a
>>> > few days ago, and he replied to me this afternoon:
>>> > > Oh. Well that's really bad news.
>>> > > As I'm using the MorphGNT for zhubert.com, it pretty much sounds
>>> like
>>> > > the project needs to shutdown to protect their copyright.
>>> > Shortly thereafter he notified me that he has shutdown zhubert.com
>>> > because of the email from German Bible Society.
>>> > Clearly we need to resolve these copyright issues.
>>> > On Mar 18, 10:40 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > > I just sent the following email to the German Bible Society:
>>> > > Dear Beate,
>>> > > > I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to
>>> promote
>>> > > > biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the
>>> Scriptures
>>> > > > accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting
>>> to fulfill
>>> > > > it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically
>>> interlinking
>>> > > > manuscripts, translations, morphosyntactic parsings, annotations,
>>> and other
>>> > > > related data... Biblical study will be greatly assisted for
>>> speakers of
>>> > > > minority languages who haven't benefited from thousands of
>>> scholars'
>>> > > > research in the English and German speaking worlds. For example, if
>>> a Creole
>>> > > > translation is semantically linked back to Greek and Hebrew, it can
>>> benefit
>>> > > > from the data attached to German and English translations since
>>> they would
>>> > > > be all connected together
>>> > > > I also understand that Biblical research and translation work costs
>>> a lot
>>> > > > of money, and I understand (and affirm) the German Bible Society's
>>> policy to
>>> > > > charge for the work it produces. I wholeheartedly affirm the DBG's
>>> mission,
>>> > > > and I want to support your essential work. One of my core
>>> philosophies
>>> > > > regarding the Open Scriptures project is that "the laborer deserves
>>> his
>>> > > > wages" (Luke 10:7 ESV). Content owners like the DBG have a right to
>>> receive
>>> > > > compensation for their labors, and I want to affirm this right in
>>> the Open
>>> > > > Scriptures project.
>>> > > > Therefore, my hope is that non-free resources such as NA27/UBS4 may
>>> be
> Hello everyone,
> I've been giving a lot of thought, obviously, to the issue of copyright, and
> I have been getting the advice of people much wiser than me. I and many in
> this group are very new to the complexities of copyright and scriptural
> texts, and thus it is easy for us to draw (potentially incorrect)
> conclusions because we have limited information. It is all too easy for me,
> at least, to let emotional reactions determine my responses, and I am wrong
> to do so. The bottom-line is that the copyright situation with the German
> Bible Society (GBS) and other content owners is not simply a matter of
> money, and it is NOT about any attempt to keep God's word out of peoples'
> hands (this is the opposite of GBS's stated mission). We cannot make those
> accusations. May God bless GBS.
> With all of that said, in this group (and I am speaking to myself), let us
> seek to be conciliatory and peaceable, and to not jump to conclusions based
> on our limited knowledge. Let us think before we speak, checking our
> attitudes and feelings before we press the send button. And furthermore, let
> us in gestures of humility and with grace, approach content owners' and seek
> to truly understand the reasons behind their policies, many of which we
> clearly do not understand.
> "Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. For
> human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness." James 1:19a-20 NET
> Thanks for your understanding and collaboration, for your passion for the
> Scriptures, and your enthusiasm to make them accessible via the Web.
> >> Thank you for your message that my colleague Beate Schubert forwarded to
> >> me. We acknowledge that you removed the MorphGNT form openscriptures.org.
> >> Both, the Greek Bible text and the critical apparatus of this edition are
> >> copyright protected. Thus publication and distribution is prohibited without
> >> permission of the copyright holder, the German Bible Society.
> >> As Beate Schubert already mentioned the German Bible Society does not
> >> license the Greek New Testament for online use as a matter of principle.
> >> This does not only apply to your but to any website. However the Greek Bible
> >> text is available for free in our Bible portalwww.bibelwissenschaft.de.
> >> Thus, everybody who wants to read the Greek Bible text has the opportunity
> >> to do it there.
> >> Dr. Bertram Salzmann - New Media Director
> >> German Bible Society -www.scholarly-bibles.com > >> Balinger Str. 31 - D-70567 Stuttgart/Germany
> > Obviously, I'm not very satisfied with their response. :-(
> > First of all, Beate Schubert never said they don't license the text for any
> > online use, but rather that they don't license the text for open source
> > projects (that is, I assumed, projects that don't generate revenue). Beate's
> > entire argument as I understood it was that Biblical research costs a lot of
> > money and that open source projects don't generate compensation, and so that
> > is why they don't allow open source usage of the text. In my email to them,
> > I was explaining that I want to support the work of the German Bible Society
> > by means of revenue generated from ads, donations, and/or subscriptions (for
> > access to their text). But Bertram says they disallow all online use of the
> > text, apparently even those that generate revenue for them. So Beate's
> > rationale isn't apparently valid... so what is the principle behind this
> > decision? The text is already all throughout the Internet and anyone can get
> > access to it, so it's not like they are protecting the text itself from
> > distribution (since it's already available via their website).
> > Lastly, Bertram's suggestion that we just go to their website to view the
> > text completely disregards the entire rationale for why we would need the
> > text (that is, semantic integration with other texts). I explained to Beate:
> > Open Scriptures can be an intermediary between application developers and
> >> content owners. The idea is for Open Scriptures to be a platform upon which
> >> developers can build applications of scripture while at the same time give
> >> content owners a distribution channel and revenue stream.
> > (I know not all of us are too keen on this idea, but I wanted to present it
> > as a possibility to the German Bible Society.) I want to send a reply to
> > Bertram that asks about the true principle behind this decision, and to get
> > a more adequate explanation. If their rules regarding the usage of their
> > text are this rigid, then obviously it's time for them to rewrite them. Do
> > any of you have additional things you think I should include in our
> > response?
> > I also need to cool down a bit.
> > Lord please give us patience and wisdom.
> > Weston
> > On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>wrote:
> >> Hi Tommy,
> >> I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. Perhaps the issue
> >> is that the MorphGNT not legally licensed under the Creative Commons
> >> license, or only the parsings and lemmas are CC-licensed but the UBS4 text
> >> column is not. So by taking out the morphological tags, the only thing you
> >> are left with is the copyrighted work.
> >> I also totally agree with you that the real value in the UBS4 is the
> >> critical apparatus, and the text itself they should make open in order to
> >> promote the text and the German Bible Society. You mentioned the ESV, which
> >> I also think is a very good example, especially now since they have made
> >> available study notes to go along with their text; the ESV text is liberally
> >> licensed, but study notes require the purchse of a physical Study Bible. If
> >> the German Bible Society could adopt a similar policy, that would be
> >> wonderful.
> >> I am still waiting to hear back from the German Bible Society regarding
> >> your question about the MorphGNT's relationship to CCAT and the fact that
> >> the MorphGNT text is used on dozens of sites out there (not that this makes
> >> it legal).
> >> Weston
> >> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Tommy <keeneto...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> I still maintain that the crucial point is the licensing of the
> >>> MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of Creative
> >>> Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative projects are
> >>> protected. That license explicitly allows transformations: "to Remix —
> >>> to adapt the work." So taking out the morphological tags would simply
> >>> be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting product is
> >>> similarly licensed it should be legal
> >>> Of course maintaining that on a discussion list and defending it in
> >>> court are two totally different things.
> >>> It also seems to me that the real value of the GBS books is the
> >>> critical apparatus. That's why people will continue to buy there
> >>> books, even if the text itself is open. So far from cutting into
> >>> profits, an open data model would actually promote the company and the
> >>> text they produce. ESV, of course, would be a classic example.
> >>> On Mar 20, 5:15 pm, Weston Ruter <WestonRu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> > NEWS FLASH: zhubert.com has been taken offline
> >>> > I forwarded the email from the German Bible Society to Zack Hubert a
> >>> > few days ago, and he replied to me this afternoon:
> >>> > > Oh. Well that's really bad news.
> >>> > > As I'm using the MorphGNT for zhubert.com, it pretty much sounds
> >>> like
> >>> > > the project needs to shutdown to protect their copyright.
> >>> > Shortly thereafter he notified me that he has shutdown zhubert.com
> >>> > because of the email from German Bible Society.
> >>> > Clearly we need to resolve these copyright issues.
> >>> > On Mar 18, 10:40 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> > > I just sent the following email to the German Bible Society:
> >>> > > Dear Beate,
> >>> > > > I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to
> >>> promote
> >>> > > > biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the
> >>> Scriptures
> >>> > > > accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting
> >>> to fulfill
> >>> > > > it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically
> >>> interlinking
> >>> > > > manuscripts, translations, morphosyntactic parsings, annotations,
> >>> and other
> >>> > > > related data... Biblical study will be greatly assisted for
> >>> speakers of
> >>> > > > minority languages who haven't benefited from thousands of
> >>> scholars'
> >>> > > > research in the English and German speaking worlds. For example, if
> >>> a Creole
> >>> > > > translation is semantically linked back to Greek and Hebrew, it can
> >>> benefit
> >>> > > > from the data attached to German and English translations since
> >>> they would
> >>> > > > be all connected together
> >>> > > > I also understand that Biblical research and translation work costs
> >>> a lot
> >>> > > > of money, and I understand (and affirm) the German Bible Society's
> >>> policy to
> >>> > > > charge for the work it produces. I wholeheartedly affirm the DBG's
> >>> mission,
> >>> > > > and I want
Thanks for your well-spoken words of diplomacy, Weston.
Apparently you and I are a lot alike and we both have to repent on an
hourly basis at times for attitude issues.
That being said, I wholeheartedly support whatever decision you and
your colleagues make in this situation. I am fine with paying a
subscription fee (preferably a 1 year or longer term) if my opinion is
any help to you guys. I would have difficulty in paying anything over
$40 or $50 a year, however.
I'm not one of your heavier users, but I do use it regularly enough to
be willing to support it.
If you guys get it set up, you might even consider using a ubb board
or similar discussion forum for people to discuss various issues
regarding the Greek. I'm sure there are scores of scholars who would
love to spend some time helping us students. Just a thought.
Thanks Weston and all. I've been following the events around a couple
times a week, meanwhile using "lesser" sites that are helpful, but boy
are they a longshot from the zhubert site!
Matt
On Mar 29, 11:46 pm, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> I've been giving a lot of thought, obviously, to the issue of copyright, and
> I have been getting the advice of people much wiser than me. I and many in
> this group are very new to the complexities of copyright and scriptural
> texts, and thus it is easy for us to draw (potentially incorrect)
> conclusions because we have limited information. It is all too easy for me,
> at least, to let emotional reactions determine my responses, and I am wrong
> to do so. The bottom-line is that the copyright situation with the German
> Bible Society (GBS) and other content owners is not simply a matter of
> money, and it is NOT about any attempt to keep God's word out of peoples'
> hands (this is the opposite of GBS's stated mission). We cannot make those
> accusations. May God bless GBS.
> With all of that said, in this group (and I am speaking to myself), let us
> seek to be conciliatory and peaceable, and to not jump to conclusions based
> on our limited knowledge. Let us think before we speak, checking our
> attitudes and feelings before we press the send button. And furthermore, let
> us in gestures of humility and with grace, approach content owners' and seek
> to truly understand the reasons behind their policies, many of which we
> clearly do not understand.
> "Let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger. For
> human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness." James 1:19a-20 NET
> Thanks for your understanding and collaboration, for your passion for the
> Scriptures, and your enthusiasm to make them accessible via the Web.
> >> Thank you for your message that my colleague Beate Schubert forwarded to
> >> me. We acknowledge that you removed the MorphGNT form openscriptures.org.
> >> Both, the Greek Bible text and the critical apparatus of this edition are
> >> copyright protected. Thus publication and distribution is prohibited without
> >> permission of the copyright holder, the German Bible Society.
> >> As Beate Schubert already mentioned the German Bible Society does not
> >> license the Greek New Testament for online use as a matter of principle.
> >> This does not only apply to your but to any website. However the Greek Bible
> >> text is available for free in our Bible portalwww.bibelwissenschaft.de.
> >> Thus, everybody who wants to read the Greek Bible text has the opportunity
> >> to do it there.
> >> Dr. Bertram Salzmann - New Media Director
> >> German Bible Society -www.scholarly-bibles.com > >> Balinger Str. 31 - D-70567 Stuttgart/Germany
> > Obviously, I'm not very satisfied with their response. :-(
> > First of all, Beate Schubert never said they don't license the text for any
> > online use, but rather that they don't license the text for open source
> > projects (that is, I assumed, projects that don't generate revenue). Beate's
> > entire argument as I understood it was that Biblical research costs a lot of
> > money and that open source projects don't generate compensation, and so that
> > is why they don't allow open source usage of the text. In my email to them,
> > I was explaining that I want to support the work of the German Bible Society
> > by means of revenue generated from ads, donations, and/or subscriptions (for
> > access to their text). But Bertram says they disallow all online use of the
> > text, apparently even those that generate revenue for them. So Beate's
> > rationale isn't apparently valid... so what is the principle behind this
> > decision? The text is already all throughout the Internet and anyone can get
> > access to it, so it's not like they are protecting the text itself from
> > distribution (since it's already available via their website).
> > Lastly, Bertram's suggestion that we just go to their website to view the
> > text completely disregards the entire rationale for why we would need the
> > text (that is, semantic integration with other texts). I explained to Beate:
> > Open Scriptures can be an intermediary between application developers and
> >> content owners. The idea is for Open Scriptures to be a platform upon which
> >> developers can build applications of scripture while at the same time give
> >> content owners a distribution channel and revenue stream.
> > (I know not all of us are too keen on this idea, but I wanted to present it
> > as a possibility to the German Bible Society.) I want to send a reply to
> > Bertram that asks about the true principle behind this decision, and to get
> > a more adequate explanation. If their rules regarding the usage of their
> > text are this rigid, then obviously it's time for them to rewrite them. Do
> > any of you have additional things you think I should include in our
> > response?
> > I also need to cool down a bit.
> > Lord please give us patience and wisdom.
> > Weston
> > On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com>wrote:
> >> Hi Tommy,
> >> I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. Perhaps the issue
> >> is that the MorphGNT not legally licensed under the Creative Commons
> >> license, or only the parsings and lemmas are CC-licensed but the UBS4 text
> >> column is not. So by taking out the morphological tags, the only thing you
> >> are left with is the copyrighted work.
> >> I also totally agree with you that the real value in the UBS4 is the
> >> critical apparatus, and the text itself they should make open in order to
> >> promote the text and the German Bible Society. You mentioned the ESV, which
> >> I also think is a very good example, especially now since they have made
> >> available study notes to go along with their text; the ESV text is liberally
> >> licensed, but study notes require the purchse of a physical Study Bible. If
> >> the German Bible Society could adopt a similar policy, that would be
> >> wonderful.
> >> I am still waiting to hear back from the German Bible Society regarding
> >> your question about the MorphGNT's relationship to CCAT and the fact that
> >> the MorphGNT text is used on dozens of sites out there (not that this makes
> >> it legal).
> >> Weston
> >> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Tommy <keeneto...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> I still maintain that the crucial point is the licensing of the
> >>> MorphGNT. If it is legally licensed under the terms of Creative
> >>> Commons NC Share and Share alike then these derivative projects are
> >>> protected. That license explicitly allows transformations: "to Remix —
> >>> to adapt the work." So taking out the morphological tags would simply
> >>> be adapting the work, and as long as the resulting product is
> >>> similarly licensed it should be legal
> >>> Of course maintaining that on a discussion list and defending it in
> >>> court are two totally different things.
> >>> It also seems to me that the real value of the GBS books is the
> >>> critical apparatus. That's why people will continue to buy there
> >>> books, even if the text itself is open. So far from cutting into
> >>> profits, an open data model would actually promote the company and the
> >>> text they produce. ESV, of course, would be a classic example.
> >>> On Mar 20, 5:15 pm, Weston Ruter <WestonRu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> > NEWS FLASH: zhubert.com has been taken offline
> >>> > I forwarded the email from the German Bible Society to Zack Hubert a
> >>> > few days ago, and he replied to me this afternoon:
> >>> > > Oh. Well that's really bad news.
> >>> > > As I'm using the MorphGNT for zhubert.com, it pretty much sounds
> >>> like
> >>> > > the project needs to shutdown to protect their copyright.
> >>> > Shortly thereafter he notified me that he has shutdown zhubert.com
> >>> > because of the email from German Bible Society.
> >>> > Clearly we need to resolve these copyright issues.
> >>> > On Mar 18, 10:40 am, Weston Ruter <westonru...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> > > I just sent the following email to the German Bible Society:
> >>> > > Dear Beate,
> >>> > > > I deeply affirm the mission of the German Bible Society (DBG), to
> >>> promote
> >>> > > > biblical research and worldwide Bible translation to make the
> >>> Scriptures
> >>> > > > accessible to everyone. I share this mission, and I am attempting
> >>> to fulfill
> >>> > > > it by means of the Open Scriptures project. By semantically
> >>> interlinking
> >>> > > > manuscripts,
$40-50 a year? My UBS4 cost less than that and it's lasted more than 10 years! That said, 10 years is about the time between "upgrades" of UBS, then I'd suggest around $3-4 per year for using their product is a more realistic figure.
Or, to calculate it another way, one might ask the lifespan of the average bible software package and the license fee that GBS collect per sale. I have no idea what this might amount to, of course, but I'd be comfortable suggesting that GBS would be delighted to get $40-50 per year per user.
In view of the above, I'd suggest a once-off license purchase per user - exactly as per the current print and software copies of the UBS text - and I think a price somewhat below that of the print copy would be realistic given the obvious reduction in cost of production and supply.
Whether this would be a realistic commercial venture for GBS is the question, however, and I'm not sure how one might go about assessing the likely interest in a down-loadable edition of UBS.
redfis...@hotmail.com wrote: > Thanks for your well-spoken words of diplomacy, Weston.
> Apparently you and I are a lot alike and we both have to repent on an > hourly basis at times for attitude issues.
> That being said, I wholeheartedly support whatever decision you and > your colleagues make in this situation. I am fine with paying a > subscription fee (preferably a 1 year or longer term) if my opinion is > any help to you guys. I would have difficulty in paying anything over > $40 or $50 a year, however.
> I'm not one of your heavier users, but I do use it regularly enough to > be willing to support it.
> If you guys get it set up, you might even consider using a ubb board > or similar discussion forum for people to discuss various issues > regarding the Greek. I'm sure there are scores of scholars who would > love to spend some time helping us students. Just a thought.
> Thanks Weston and all. I've been following the events around a couple > times a week, meanwhile using "lesser" sites that are helpful, but boy > are they a longshot from the zhubert site!
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