Tech Forum

This seems like a good place to raise the question of the relationship or nature of agreement between Bryce Yancey and the Church which allowed for the distribution of content via YanceyWare? I am asking because I have been looking into the possibility of creating a JavaME equivalent to this application. I have already been able to create Java code which can read out the html content of a ybk file. This was a proof of concept. I have not had any success in getting in contact with Bryce and so I ended up reverse engineering the ybk file format. This allowed to have a proof of concept that a compatible Java reader could be created. I am concerned at this point about the legalities of doing so.

I understand that the Church is under responsibility to preserve the copyright on the scriptures. This means that in a worsted case scenario If I proceed wrongly I could break copyright and end up getting sued by the Church. As such it seems prudent before going any further to find out exactly what the legalities are in order to create such a reader.

Why create a JavaME reader if YanceyWare already exists? The reason is that there are far far more Java enabled phones around than Windows Mobile based devices. This would mean a JavaME based reader could have the broadest reach for mobile devices as JavaME seems to be the widest spread common platform for mobile phones and smart phones.

Carl,

I've been following your posts in the YanCEyWare forum regarding this and I think your questions would be best answered by either Bryce himself, or contact the Church's Intellectual Property Office directly at:

Phone: 801-240-3959 or 1-800-453-3860, ext. 2-3959
Fax: 801-240-1187
E-Mail: cor-intellectualproperty@ldschurch.org.

or by writing to:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Intellectual Property Office
50 E. North Temple
18th Floor, Salt Lake City, UT 84150-3012

I have sent an email. I shall wait and see regarding the response.

Emails sent to both the Intellectual Property departments and Bryce Yancey. Now I just have to wait and see.

Carl Jokl wrote:Emails sent to both the Intellectual Property departments and Bryce Yancey. Now I just have to wait and see.

Lets hope both can see the advantages in what we are trying to achieve here.

The Ybk format with its support is ideal to make available to others while preserving the content.

It is not going to be an easy project even if approved. JavaME programming is challenging. Memory and resources are constrained. Available API's are limited. If I get a reader working it would likely work quite differently to YanceyWare. I am not trying to have a full blown HTML rendering capability, at least not initially anyway. I will probably be doing a lot of low level stuff. It could be gruelling but I am a glutton for punishment so I guess I wouldn't have it any other way.

From my perspective I would happily have all of the project be open source. I am not doing this for the money or profit and I never was much of an entrepreneur. I might end up not being able to make all of the project open source if the nature of working with proprietary technologies or protected resources part of any agreement might prevent me from distributing the source for handling the file format for example.

Another hurdle I could run into is with JSR 75 (file system access). In order to use that most phones require the Java app to be digitally signed. To do this I am likely going to need to pay for a certificate from an issuing body. I might just have to deal with it if/when it comes up. I don't know a huge deal about the practicalities of getting digital certificates for Java i.e. whether I have to get an approval certificate from each handset vendor or whether I just have to get one from someone like Verisign. I just hope it isn't something with huge prohibitive costs such that I cannot afford to do it. I can live with paying some money for the greater good. If it is God's will that it happens then I am sure he shall prepare a way for it to come to pass.

*Update*

I have now signed up to: http://javaverified.com

This seems a fairly good place to start looking into signing of MIDlets. The cost of testing and having applications signed is not made clear. To even start the process I need a publisher ID which I can get from Trust Center: http://www.trustcenter.de/en/products/t ... rified.htm. That would cost $200 to get a certificate and the certificate will expire after a year. I wonder if the Church's status as a registered charity makes any difference to anything if for arguments sake the Church took ownership of the project. It is one thing to charge large sums to businesses. At the end of the day those business make the money back though sales of their products. In the case of a non profit project it is just pure cost with no hope of getting the money back. Well, we shall see. In the mean time more waiting. Technically I may have broken the terms of use for the forum as one of the items not to post was "Legal Discussions" unless something else was meant by that.

I note that you are from Alnwick. Would you know Timothy Kay? For all I know you could actually be Timothy Kay. If I remember correctly he said he would soon be starting studying something relating to 3D rendering at Norwich University.

Bryce got in touch and seems willing to let me use the format under some provisos. Some details are still to be worked out. I have heard nothing from the intellectual property department. I wonder if they will get back to me or if they are too busy.

Carl Jokl wrote:I have heard nothing from the intellectual property department.

Looking at the time stamps, it appears that you've sent your request after hours on Friday. Monday the 7th was a national holiday (Labor Day) in the US. So I don't think they've even had a chance to read their mail.

Carl Jokl wrote:Bryce got in touch and seems willing to let me use the format under some provisos. Some details are still to be worked out. I have heard nothing from the intellectual property department. I wonder if they will get back to me or if they are too busy.

Thats great news Bryce.

dkjorgi

PS I have replied in a private message about Tim.