Re: quran license

[Mete Kural <metekural at yahoo dot com>]

Has anybody asked the Quran Complex whether they
provide a computer version of the Arabic Quran and
fonts to render it? I think this is more important
than the translations.

--- Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com> wrote:
> --- Mohammad DAMT <md at mt dot web dot id> wrote:
> > Finally our lawyer friend Erwin Sundoro <sundoro
> at hotmail dot com> 
> > suggested an addendum to LGPL and disclaimer for
> libquran and data 
> 
> Great - its always nice to have a lawyer friend :-)
> 
> > files. He said that Quran can't be licensed as
> nobody is holding it's 
> > copyright. And a license can't be published if
> there is no copyright. 
> > Even if the data files are translation of the
> original text, since a 
> > translation can be considered as a derivative work
> of the original text.
> > 
> > If there's no license we can't put restrictions in
> data files. One of 
> > his idea is to provide a "certified" data files.
> We can use GPG or 
> > simply MD5 hash to make a data file certified. The
> GPG signature or MD5 
> > then published in Quran section in Arabeyes
> website. If data files 
> > installed in user's computer are not having same
> signature/hash then we 
> > (Arabeyes) are not responsible for that copy.
> 
> I really have no comments on the license (or
> addition thereof) as I'm sure
> there are lots of people more capable than I in this
> field.  One related
> comment.  Walid, M.Yousif and I (to some degree)
> have been trying to contact
> qurancomplex.org to see if we can use some of their
> translations and in one
> of our conversations the topic of using MD5 came up
> and we kinda thought of
> the following.  Instead of Arabeyes hosting any of
> the translations (or the
> actual Arabic Quran), we should simply point people
> to where they can
> download them from.  For instance, if we can get
> qurancomplex.org to meet us
> half way, they can supply us with say an english
> translation XML file (per
> whatever format you guys deem acceptable), we'd then
> generate an MD5
> fingerprint.  Once that fingerprint is gotten, we
> embed that info into the
> Quran library (in binary format) so that the program
> would only open
> pre-defined and agreed-upon fingerprinted data. 
> That would then render the
> "where did you get the data from" question
> immaterial (as long as the MD5
> message digests match, it doesn't matter).
> 
> As I'm not sure what has transpired with our contact
> with qurancomplex
> (Walid/M.Yousif could you please give us an update -
> is qurancomplex now
> aware of how serious we are about this ?), I'm not
> sure how best to proceed
> as we're back to the original problem at hand -
> where to get non-tampered
> with data from ?
> 
> Salam and sorry to get off topic a bit.
> 
>  - Nadim
> 
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