Question regarding purchases

[Luckylou1980]

I’ve been using bible software for about two years , and I must admit that I thought it would never take the place of my physical books. At this point I’m really loving it. My question is when one makes a purchase is the content for the purchaser or is it like purchasing to use? The reason I ask is I was wondering if a company goes out of business could one still use the items that was purchased?

[cim]

I've never seen any licencing statements at Accordance. What they do post is "you already own this" to prevent duplicate purchase. For application software, it's always license to use, not own.

[Lawrence]

I don't know the answer to the legal technicalities, but I purchased on the basis that I have perpetual access to the resources I paid for.

 

From a technical perspective, however, the answer is that it's somewhat fragile. It depends on what functionality resides on the company's servers.

 

If you downloaded everything you bought, you'd be able to keep accessing your material so long as the system stays up. But if the platform requires a back-to-base check every so often, then if the 'base' goes away, you're shut out of the platform and hence your material.

 

Likewise, if you use integration features that link through the company's servers to get to your material (e.g. URL locations, linking through accordance.bible), then if the server goes away, your links will no longer work.

 

In the event that a platform goes under, it would be a good idea for users to band together to keep the servers going, and to collectively pay programmers to produce a fully stand-alone copy of the software. That, or hope for another platform to offer a migration path.

 

From a financial perspective, it might be possible to insure against such a risk. If this is insurable, you'd pay premium for each period of coverage, and if the company went under while you're insured, you'd be paid an agreed amount, which you can then use to try to purchase equivalent products from other vendors. You'd need to check with your insurer about this, though. Losing a book or even a whole physical library due to physical events is of a different risk profile to losing an e-library due to a vendor going out of business.

 

Let's hope this isn't relevant to any Bible software company whose products we're currently using.

Edited December 26, 2022 by Lawrence

[Kristin]

Hi @Luckylou1980, @cim, and @Lawrence,

I am not an authoritative source, but I do know a few things:

 

1) I was speaking with someone who will remain nameless (since I don't know if they would want being mentioned or not), but they told me that what happened with Bible Works was REALLY odd, so hopefully Accordance will be around for the rest of our lives, but in the event that is not the case, they said it would be most likely that we would be absorbed by another company and the licenses would transfer without an issue.

 

2) You do NOT need to periodically confirm your credentials or anything. Once you download it, the software it is yours on your computer forever, even if the server is down. The only issue is if you want to download new information you obviously need the server. If you change your computer, you may, or may not need to put in passwords, it just depends on how you personally do the migration.

 

3) If you start using the web feature with Acc 14, that would be a different situation of course, but without that you can access everything you have downloaded without the internet without a problem. A few weeks ago I actually had an internet outage and it didn't hinder anything I did with Accordance in the slightest.

 

I think all of us who went throught the Bible Works fiasco are kind of jumpy, but my source said that was really odd, and theoretically we shouldn't get locked out of anything.

 

I hope this helps some,

Kristin

[Luckylou1980]

Thanks for the information. I just wanted to be sure that if I was fully invested In Bible software I can keep my purchases if something would happen. 

[mgvh]

BibleWorks, imo, was actually kind of remarkable in a good way. They announced in advance what would be happening and allowed people to download the full installation package. They did not close down the main web page (https://www.bibleworks.com/) and the forum is still functioning. Occasionally new posts come up, but any of the old questions are there with answers.

Most importantly, BibleWorks still runs perfectly well on my Windows system and made the transition all the way to Windows11 without incident. As I've noted elsewhere, I still use it regularly because it does things neither Accordance or Logos can do. (Interweaving of texts, verse list and word list managers)

I'm not sure why no one tried to buy out BibleWorks. I suspect perhaps because it was so Windows-centric, and the underlying code may not have been easily transferable. BW also had so many versions available, and I wonder how all the licensing would have been transferable or not.

[Kristin]

@mgvh,

I just want to add that it sounds like you had BW10. If so, like you said, it can work, however, people with BW9 were totally locked out and had NO way of accessing ANYTHING BibleWorks on their computer. While people with BW9 were given the option to upgrade it was NOT clarified that if you did not want to spend even more money you would lose what you had.

Concerning your question why no one tried to buy them.... my source told me that multiple companies DID try to buy them and the owner of BibleWorks was not interested and just let those on BW9 go down the drain. No one knows why, but it was not for technical reasons. This is part of why my source said this would be VERY unlikely to happen to Accordance, since there was no technical reason why the BW program was not transferred, and again, multiple companies did try to help out.

Kristin

[Michel Gilbert]

I got BW10 because it was such a great upgrade, especially the user lexicon, and it still works flawlessly in Win11, including in my M1 Parallels VM.

 

BW posted this three months before they closed:

 

"After June 15, versions of BibleWorks prior to version 10 will no longer be supported. Current installations for all versions will continue to function normally. However, in the unlikely event that a driver or Windows update breaks the program, there will be no updates to fix the problem. It is important to note that many people are still using 15 year old versions of the program on Windows. However, if you want to continue using the program for the long term, we encourage you to upgrade to BibleWorks 10 while it is still available."

 

I continued to use BW9 alongside 10. I don't remember which Windows version that was on. When I installed BW10 on a new Win 10 desktop, I didn't try to install 9. Did Windows updates eventually cause problems for version 9? Or was it impossible to do a fresh install of version 9 after June 15, 2018?

 

Anyways, hopefully these are closing lessons that Accordance will never need to learn.

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

All software is on a license to own it format (or rent it in the case of a subscription, there are a few exceptions when it comes to free/open source stuff).

 

With Accordance, once you download your app and modules, everything pretty much runs offline except for app/module updates, more so that some other Bible software apps.

 

Even if Accordance were to ever go out of business (which is highly unlikely, the company is still in great shape and is likely hiring new talent, regardless of the rocky Accordance 14 rollout), your version of Accordance would likely work for a while until an OS update possibly broke it, but that would take a while. Accordance would also likely be absorbed by another Bible software company (as what happened to Wordsearch) to protect your investment. Although Accordance isn’t going anywhere, so no need to worry about that. Their future is brighter than the lamp that’s their logo.

 

BibleWorks is unique in that they have chosen not to be acquired by another Bible software company. The other guys offered to acquire them, but they refused. Apparently BW10 is still functional (I never got into BW and spent all my BW money on Accordance, glad I did).

 

Physical books are not immune to being lost though either. They could be stolen, destroyed in a catastrophe, wear out, etc. I keep a handful of stuff in print for “off grid” reading if I’m in an area with limited power/technology, but most everything I just use in Accordance.