pmachapman
Puritan Board Freshman
My experience with Crossway confirms this. A few years ago I wrote the first Audio Bible app for Windows Phone and Windows 8/10. It was quite successful, and Crossway's API licensing at the time allowed me near unlimited use, so long as I did not keep local copies of the data or profit from their translation (I didn't make any money from it, but it did look good on my CV). Someone at Crossway even contacted me once to say my app was one of the biggest users of their API (my app today has 57,000+ users, I think it was about 16,000 then).Lockman seems to be getting more liberal with allowing it used and Crossway is getting less.
Fast-forward to my programming this last week, and their version 3 API has lots more access restrictions - there is no way that I can update my app to use their new API, as it only allows 5,000 queries a day, and my users would chew that up pretty quickly. On top of that, the authentication scheme would not work with the media player component Microsoft provided with Windows 8, and so I have just left it - the day Crossway pulls the plug on their version 1 API, I will just have to reduce the app to being KJV-only.
I compare this to their licensing the ESV to the Roman Catholic Church, and allowing them to alter the New Testament text to suit Roman Catholic theology yet still call it an ESV, and I get a bit perplexed at the changes that are taking place at Crossway. As a side note, I don't mind their licensing it to the ACNA to include the Apocrypha.
I wish Bible publishers would only use copyright to preserve the integrity of the text (like the Crown Copyright on the KJV or Thomas Nelson's old copyright message in the ASV), and not to hamper people creating different ways of getting God's Word out there.
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