Glyssen Characters

[tombogle]

GlyssenCharacters (formerly part of Glyssen Engine -- currently in the same Github repo as Glyssen, but available as a separate nuget package) is a .Net component used by Glyssen and Vessel. Glyssen Characters includes four data files that represent hundreds of hours of careful research and are likely the most thorough source of biblical character information (for speaking characters) currently developed.
Character Detail - tab-separated list of unique character IDs and information about each character
Character Verse - tab-separated list of all known places in Scripture where quoted text might occur. (The NT is probably very close to 100% complete. The OT is quite thorough as well, but likely missing dozens or even hundreds of places where quotes might rarely occur.
Narrator Overrides - XML file indicating books or passages where the author uses first-person speech to give a historical account, relate a poem, give advice, etc.
Style-to-Character Mappings - small XML file with standard mappings from special-purpose USFM styles to character IDS

[RobH123]

Wow, lots of good stuff there to get to understand. The Glyssen code is MIT licensed and I guess that applies to included data files as well. Would you/SIL consider moving or copying the data files out of the Glyssen repo, and perhaps even making them public domain? (I chose CC0 when creating this repo but didn't know the pros and cons vs the Unlicense -- not mentioned at https://choosealicense.com/licenses/ unfortunately. But probably best to get that correct now while there's only a handful of us needing to agree.) If it was me, I'd rename the .txt files to .tsv or something at the same time.

[tombogle]

Yes, the MIT license covers everything. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if someone were to take just those data files if that would qualify as a "substantial" portion. I think I can be pretty certain that SIL wouldn't go after anyone unless maybe they were trying to use the files in some way that obviously harmed SIL or really interfered with the work we're all trying to accomplish. I think the main protection MIT gives is the assurance that someone else can't later claim that the work was theirs and try to make it look like you are infringing on their copyright, but I'm not even sure about that. Officially, the Glyssen software is jointly licensed by SIL and FCBH, so we'd probably need to get both organizations on board to move the data out of that license. (In practice, not one from FCBH has actually directly edited that data, but it does to some extent reflect their efforts as well.) I certainly don't personally care how it is licensed (or not) as long as good people everywhere can use it freely.
I don't see any significant difference between CC0 and the Unlicense, but I did a little reading about the differences and while I still can't see the difference, now I can see why I'm not a lawyer.
I would definitely consider moving them into a separate repo if we agree that they are going to be useful outside of Glyssen. That would probably be the sensible time to look into changing the license. (MIT is more relevant to software than data anyway.) I would just need to figure out the plumbing to be able to get the files when building Glyssen Engine. I've also thought about separating Glyssen and Glyssen Engine, but so far it hasn't seemed worth the effort.