As a result of our inability to meet the requirements of our licensing agreement with Biblica, Inc., the following translations will be removed from BibleBot:
- New International Version (NIV)
- New International Version – UK (NIVUK)
- New International Reader’s Version (NIRV)
- Nueva Versión Internacional (NVI)
- Nova Versão Internacional (NVI-PT)
- La Bible du Semeur (BDS)
- Священное Писание (Восточный перевод), версия с «Аллахом» (CARSA)
Their corresponding copyright notices will also be removed from https://biblebot.xyz/copyrights/.
Why were we unable to fulfill the requirements?
While we happily paid the $500/year royalty fee for use of their translation portfolio, we were not able to honor their requests in giving Biblica-provided translations priority over other translations in the bot. This included the requirement to have them listed above all other translations and to eventually give consideration to changing our default version. We lacked (and still lack) legal counsel in order to make these requirements negotiable, as ideologically it was not desirable for us to give such an imbalance in translation options. Our goal is to make BibleBot available in the way you prefer best, without any sort of encouragement to use particular translations (except out of expedience, like how we recommended the MEV to replace the NKJV when the NKJV was absent). We certainly have no desire to change our default version, which has been picked to accommodate most users with a stable, generally-accepted translation.
We paid our dues regularly, but according to Biblica the agreement expired retroactively in April last year, which means we have overpaid our dues by $1,000 USD (once in April 2023 for 23-24 and once this year for 24-25). We will seek to have this overage refunded.
I apologize for the great inconvenience to the 5,700 of you who have enjoyed these translations. We will work on finding suitable analogues and recommendations to substitute those translations, but until we do, please see /listversions. All users/servers who have the aforementioned versions as preferences will be reverted to the default RSV.
Please forgive me, a sinner, and forgive us for our shortcomings.
Seraphim
Executive Director, Lead Software Engineer
Kerygma Digital
If you have any additional questions, feel free to ping me in #lounge (on the BibleBot support server) or shoot me an email at team@kerygma.digital.