The Bible is a gift from God to His Church. The Church has maintained it throughout the centuries. Pastors and lay leaders have labored over it and delivered it to their flocks through sermons, teachings, and Bible studies.
The Bible belongs to God's people. It is not some company's intellectual property.
Therefore, The Church's Bible is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. People are free to use, copy and modify The Church's Bible. Proper attribution is required. As well, any and all modifications and/or derivative works must also use this license. This ensures that derivative works all carry this license forward into the future.
Similarly, the software used to create, display and use The Church's Bible will also be given to the Church freely under the GNU Public License 3.0. As with the text itself, this provides people with the ability to use, share and modify this software so long as they properly attribute it. All derivative and secondary works will likewise also need to be licensed under the GPL 3.0.
Not only is this licensing the right thing to do, but we firmly believe it will lead to widespread adoption of The Church's Bible. Much like Linux was at first, we expect to be derided as amateur hobbyists. We know that Jehovah has a plan, and He will work it out through His people. Eventually and inexorably, the static proprietary intellectual property gatekeeping model will lose out to the dynamic and responsive model of sending the Church's Bible out to the Church for the Church that we have here launched.
| Goal | Publish a copyright-free English language version of the Bible |
| Serves | English readers |
| Standard Version | The Church's Bible |
| Study Version | The Church's Bible Study Edition |
| Reader Version | The Church's Bible Reader Edition |
| Focus Version | The Church's Bible Focus Edition |