Zhubert.com, aka ReGreek has gone offline for good. This is sad, because it really was an outstanding online site for working with the Greek NT and could do some analytical tasks that couldn't be done elsewhere. Why has it gone down? Zack Hubert, the site creator, writes:
It has come to my attention that the MorphGNT team has had to pull their text offline at the request of the German Bible Society, so this site is offline as well. As their database was the heart of the window-dressing we provided here, there's not much to show without it.There are many great Bible study resources out there, and some new ones that are being built. I encourage you in your efforts to make use of those.
This site will be powered off for good soon.
For more information on the copyright and licensing issue, check HERE. Weston Ruter has done an amazing job in the last month or so reviving the Open Scriptures project, but he and the project have been attentive to being legal and observing copyrights. James Tauber notes that he and Ulrik Petersen have intentions on providing other ways to access the text which would not conflict with the German Bible Society copyright, but in the meantime, it appears that one will have to use the texts by Tischendorf or Westcott-Hort as base texts for any implementation.
(One such possibility is the GreekBibleStudy site which uses Tischendorf for the Greek NT.)
In any case, this is unfortunate news, and there are a number of other sites using the MorphGNT text which will be affected as well. The German Bible Society certainly has a right to their text, but one would hope that they would find ways of being more gracious in allowing it to be licensed.
Thanks for sharing the news. I'm not sure the German Bible Society has PR agents scouring the web, but this is certainly not something that is going to win them a lot of points. I don't know what a happy resolution would look like, but this isn't it.
ReplyDeleteThis is tragic. Thanks for sharing it though. I'm tempted to boycott GBS...not that I buy from them often...at all.
ReplyDeleteIt is not actually true to say the MorphGNT team has had to pull their text offline as we don't offer a text. However, it is possible to generate the UBS text from our database and it is projects that have done that that have had to pull their content.
ReplyDeleteMany years ago CCAT offered both the straight UBS text and the morphological analysis from which MorphGNT is derived. They pulled the straight UBS text a long time ago but, to my knowledge, the morphological analysis was never at issue.
So, would a database on a local computer that allows a user to download the MorphGNT file, import it into the database and then retrieve a passage of Scripture, violate the copyright? I.e, Does any use of the MorphGNT to create a sequential portion of the NT text (even by an end user) violate the copyright?
ReplyDeleteLouis
@Louid
ReplyDeleteApparently so, yes. It appears that only the morphological tags are open-licensed, as discussed here
I recently noticed that they put the NA27, LXX, BHS, and Vulgate texts online: German Bible Society (Deutschen Bibelgesellschaft). It doesn't make up for the tools that Zhubert had, but at least we have access to all their texts.
ReplyDeleteBen
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