Starting point: All rights reserved

In the Traditional Process, the content is under copyright and all rights are reserved. Derivative works, including a translation of the content, are not permitted without the express permission of the copyright holder.

Starting point: Some rights reserved

The Open Process is made possible by making copyrighted content available under an open license. We are defining an open license as one that gives anyone the legal freedom to create derivative works of the content (e.g. a translation) and distribute the content without any imposed restrictions (e.g. unlimited numbers of printed copies, inclusion in its entirety on any website, etc.), even for profit.

Two highly-recommended open licenses are the Creative Commons Attribution License and the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. The latter is the license used for content on this website as well as the Door43 project (http://door43.org).

Choose language

The content creator often starts by choosing a language into which to translate the content. Identifying a language in which to work can be motivated by economic considerations (i.e. reaching the largest number of people for the lowest cost). This often results in minority languages – that might benefit significantly from the resource – not getting access to it because it is not economically beneficial for the content creator to make it available in their language.

Languages choose themselves

In an open process, speakers of any language can translate the content into that language. Because of the open license under which the work is released, the content can be translated from any other language that has created a translation of the content. They are not limited by needing to know the language in which the content was originally created. For instance, speakers of a minority language of only a few thousand speakers in the heart of Africa could translate a resource from Swahili into their own language, even if the resource was originally created in English and translated into Swahili by a bilingual English/Swahili speaker.1

Find a translator

The content creator seeks out a translator to translate the content into the target language. Depending on the network of contacts that the content creator has in a language group, this may be a lengthy and expensive process.

Translators identify themselves

Anyone who wants to can legally translate open-licensed content into any other language. As more people from other languages discover the content (maybe in a trade language), they can immediately begin the process of translating the content into their own language. People working with other ministries in a language group may voluntarily serve as a bridge to facilitate the process.

Pay the translator

Often, the person doing the work is a translator by profession and is paid a salary accordingly. Hiring a professional translator does not always result in a better quality translation, as the term “professional translator” can be used to cover a broad spectrum of actual translation ability. In other scenarios, native speakers of the target language are paid to assist in the translation process.

Translators volunteer their time

Translators that have discovered the resource and want to make it available in another language tend to do the work from a discipleship motive, because they believe in it, and so are willing to invest their time to make it available for the spiritual growth of their own people or target group. They may work as a team (crowd-sourcing) which can tend to improve the quality of the translation and is not hindered by salary considerations, since they are working as volunteers.2

Find content distributor

The content creator identifies a distributor (often only one distributor) of the content in the target region with whom to do business. Depending on the type of content, this may be a book publisher, radio station, etc.

Everyone is a content distributor

Everyone who encounters the content has, by virtue of the open license under which it is released, the legal freedom to redistribute the content to anyone else, by whatever means is most appropriate for them. This includes printing content from the Internet, making photocopies, sharing MP3s, broadcasting on local FM stations, emailing friends, playing recordings of the content publicly in villages, etc. Imagination and need are the only limitations to the distribution and use of the content.

Assign specific legal rights to distributor and negotiate terms
of license

The content creator assembles a legal team to oversee all matters of international copyright and language-specific distribution of the content. These rights are agreed upon before any work on the translation of the content (e.g. book, radio program, etc.) proceeds.3 This process is costly and may take months, sometimes years to complete.

Everyone is already pre-cleared for any ministry use

An open license takes a different approach to assigning specific legal rights. Instead of denying all rights except those that are specifically granted to a specific entity for a specific situation, anyone is pre-cleared to use the content for any purpose, subject to the conditions of the license.

Negotiate royalties with content distributor

For content where the product is sold (e.g. books), the content creator negotiates the royalty percentages and process with the distributor. Even if the content is donated to the distributor royalty-free, this requires a legal transaction to protect both entities.

Nothing to negotiate

There are no royalties or agreements to negotiate, since all legal permissions are clearly stated in the open license and anyone can be a content distributor.

Translate the content (in private)

In order to protect the commercial value of the content being translated, the translation process is usually carried on behind closed doors. The translation process may involve a single person working on their own computer with little to no peer review or quality control. It can be a lengthy process and because of the overhead of the process, the desire to shorten the “time to market” of the content can result in taking shortcuts in the process that negatively affect the quality of the translated content.

Translate the content (in the open)

The translation process is done in the open, on-line, providing built-in peer review of every aspect of the process by any speaker of that language, anywhere in the world. Mistakes are easily corrected and improvements are easily made. As more people find out about the work, interest increases and other people join in the process – drafting, reviewing, editing, back-translating, formatting, etc. The size of the contributing team can grow in proportion to the number of people interested in having that resource in their own language. As more people become involved, the likelihood of having people join the project who have the skills and time to create translations of the highest quality improves.

Distribute content (one-way)

Upon completion of the translation process, the content is distributed to the target audience. This may be through book sales, radio broadcasts, etc.

Engage audiences (two-way)

In addition to allowing unrestricted distribution of the content by anyone to anyone, open-licensed discipleship resources enable content consumers to become content creators. Instead of needing to create discipleship resources in their own languages by starting from scratch, they can legally build on the work of others, reducing the amount of time needed to create the resources and potentially improving the doctrinal integrity of the new resources they create.

Cross-over formats are restricted

Unless the license negotiations covered the creation of other formats of the content (and many do not), the creation of new formats of the content (e.g. book → audio book, or radio program → Bible study booklet, etc.) are disallowed and creating them requires repeating many of the
preceding steps.

Cross-over formats are unrestricted

If someone wants to create an audio book version of an open-licensed book, they can do so without restriction. If someone wants to create a printed Bible study guide from a radio program, they are free to do so. Re-mixing and re-purposing are permissible under an open license, so meeting the need for discipleship resources in any format is not limited by licensing restrictions.

Problems are costly and time-consuming to resolve

In some situations, there may be problems that arise with some aspect of the translation process or with the distribution mechanism of the content distributor in the target region. This may result in stagnation of the project, additional expense for the content creator to resolve the problems, even necessitating starting the process over again with different entities.

Problems can be fixed by anyone, without delay, for free

Because anyone can be involved in any part of an Open translation process, there is no “single point of failure” for the project. If a translator drops out, anyone who wants to can take their place. Since anyone can distribute the content, the content creator is not dependent on a single entity to get the job done and the only limitation to the distribution of the content is the need for that content by the consumers.

Some languages excluded

For every language in which a content creator wants to distribute a resource, the same steps in the process need to be undertaken. As the number of languages increases, so does the overall expense (especially considering the need for updated revisions of the work in every language). With ~7,000 languages in the world, financial calculations alone indicate that some languages will not get the resource in their language.

No language excluded

Any language in which there are speakers who want the discipleship resource can have the resource in their language, at no cost to the content creator.

Cost: Expensive

Creating discipleship resources in the traditional process often has a high overhead (license fees, salaries, legal fees, travel expenses, etc.) and is a costly process.

Cost: Virtually free

Discipleship resources created in an Open process have very little overhead (e.g. just an open-source wiki engine, in the case of Door43) and other expenses are paid by the people who want the project to succeed (e.g. Internet access, personal laptops, travel expenses, etc.). The actual cost to the original content creator can be so little that it is virtually free (though the content creator could invest resources in the promotion of the content and team-building, if they wanted to).

Focus can be split: Equipping and recovering costs

Because of the high cost associated with the creation of the content, there can be a split in the focus of the content creator. On the one hand, the whole point of the resource is to equip the global church to grow in discipleship. On the other hand, recovering some of the cost is a valid goal as well. Depending on the resource (books, in particular) and the pricing model chosen, this can inadvertently result in limited distribution due to restrictions such as price tags, license fees, royalties, DRM, etc.

Focus is singular: Equipping

Because the Open Process is an inherently less expensive means of getting discipleship content into other languages, the content creator can be exclusively focused on equipping the global church. This results in increased distribution of the content and lessening the financial hindrances to the ministry.

Some international exposure for content creator

By having a resource translated into some other languages, the content creator gains some exposure at the international level. However, as has been mentioned above, the cost implications of the Traditional Process necessarily limit how far the content can go.

Unlimited international exposure for content creator

In the New Information Age, he who gives away the most, first, wins. By releasing content under an open license that requires attribution of the original content to the original content creator, anyone can translate the content into any language, provided the attribution is in place. Thus, theoretically, the content creator could have their content translated into every language of the world with attribution to them for the original work. The potential this has for opening up new ministry opportunities or markets for other resources is significant.

Content creation follows “scarcity model”

in the scarcity model, parameters for content creation are often governed by the relative cost of creating the final product. Creating traditional media (e.g. a published book or radio broadcast) is expensive and can result in tighter control of the translation process, distribution, pricing/licensing, etc.

For instance, once a book is published, correction of errors is not possible except in a future revision (assuming people buy it). Because publishing a revised version would require significant amounts of time and money, content creators tend to tightly control the content creation process of the original work from start to finish, with the goal of minimizing the use of the scarce resources.

Because of the significant cost that went into creating a discipleship resource using the scarcity model, there can be an understandable hesitation to releasing that content free of charge and with the freedom for others to use it for any ministry purpose.

Content creation follows “abundance model”

in the abundance model, the final product is often in the “New Media” genre, including web pages, crowd-sourced content, podcasts, etc. These tend to be relatively inexpensive to produce, often resulting in a “release early, release often” or “abundance” model.

If a crowd-sourced discipleship resource is being created in a wiki (e.g. the Open Bible Handbook – http://door43.org/Handbook), and a correction is needed, it can be made as easily as clicking “Edit”, making the change and clicking “Save.” There was no expense needed to make the revision and it was corrected for everyone, anywhere in the world, immediately. This model for creating discipleship resources removes the need to tightly control every aspect of the resource creation process. (See http://door43.org/quality for how discipleship resources on Door43 can be both open and trustworthy.)

Because there is virtually no cost that goes into creating and maintaining resources that are created in an “abundance” model, there is nothing to be gained by controlling or limiting their distribution and use by others.