Grants/Open Lutheran Hymnal

2010-06-26T22:27:56Z

Dermusikman: Created page with '{{Grant Application |Project Title=Open Lutheran Hymnal |applicants=Jonathan Hadley |contact person=Jonathan Hadley |coordinator=Jonathan Hadley |start date=2010/08/01 |end date=…'

{{Grant Application
|Project Title=Open Lutheran Hymnal
|applicants=Jonathan Hadley
|contact person=Jonathan Hadley
|coordinator=Jonathan Hadley
|start date=2010/08/01
|end date=2010/09/30
|Affiliation=None
|Mainurl=http://www.openlutheranhymnal.org
|Affiliated=No
|description=Open Lutheran Hymnal is to be a dynamic web portal providing public domain/Creative Commons licensed hymns for Lutherans. It is hoped the project will communicate the ethical and Christian character of media sharing to the 8.6 million professing Lutherans in North America, and the Christian community at large. After developing the necessary software to support the project, the hundreds of public domain hymns available in print will be aggregated, making them available in a variety of musical settings dynamically. In time, it is hoped the project may expand to include openly distributable liturgies, service planning and publication tools, and promote change in church music publication.
|output=The grant will be used to develop the website and software tools necessary to satisfy the first project goal: A demonstrably functional, dynamic website which will make hymns available in a variety of formats. For example, "Silent Night" might be available as a PDF in 4-voice musical notation, a PNG image for Guitar chords with lyrics, MIDI file to interface with a church organ, or MP3 format for a smaller congregation. (The output files are dynamically created from a single database.)
|community=The targeted community is the Lutheran Church, specifically its professional musicians who must navigate the present copyright morass to fulfill their calling. The project will ease their burden and their consciences, as many resort to copyright infringement and recognize it to be necessary theft. It will also relieve financial burdens for those who faithfully follow present law. It is my personal conviction, also, that the present system of church music publication is injurious to Christian fellowship and therefore spiritually harmful. I hope the promotion of copyright awareness and shared music will alleviate church administration and strengthen Christians both within and outside of the Lutheran community. (In 2008, 8.6 million American adults self-identify as Lutheran according to wikipedia; there are tens of thousands of congregations.)
|community relationship=I am a life-long Lutheran, mid-way through my seminary training to be ordained in The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod; I hope to become a hospital chaplain. I have also been a serious musician, and passionate advocate of Free/Open Source technologies and ethos. I am the right man for this job because I recognize the need and have the drive to see it to completion. I consider it a spiritual as well as social imperative to call awareness to this cause and provide a means by which to correct it within my Christian community. I am a competent programmer, and am thoroughly familiar with old and new web technologies, but have not yet undertaken a project of this scope.
|measurement=I will measure and evaluate impact primarily by web traffic statistics. I will consider, also, feedback from the community through email and donations. I will solicit and train volunteers for data entry; the number of interested volunteers will be a criteria of quantifiable impact.
|participants=For development, I expect that I will be the only participant. I may solicit input from friends and the open source community at large, but I will be the only significant programmer/maintainer for the duration of the grant disbursement. I and a passionate friend will enter hymn data to populate the database, and I expect a couple more acquaintences will volunteer their time for that, also. After the completion of the phase for which I am requesting a grant, I hope that many people will volunteer data entry time and even contribute musical works to the project.
|impact=The goal of Open Lutheran Hymnal is to promote awareness of Creative Commons' mission. It is hoped that awareness will promote change and passion among church musicians and laypeople to uphold the ideals of that mission within the Christian community and society at large. The project will encourage professional musicians to re-license their copyrighted work to Creative Commons licenses and/or release future work under such a license.
|tech needs=I intend to develop a relational database to store website and hymn data; a graphical tool to facilitate simple input of the hymn data either through web or stand-alone application; and the software to output hymn data as PostScript/PDF, PNG image, MIDI, and possibly MP3. I expect to utilize MySQL or SQLite, PHP, Python, Lilypond, and possibly FluidSynth, all of which are compatible with the open source software which will be produced. Music would be stored as Lilypond text files, permitting simple rendering as PostScript, PNG, or MIDI. PostScript is easily converted to PDF; MIDI, using a soft-synth, may be rendered to MP3. The graphical input tool is a front-end to manipulate text string in which Lilypond files are encoded. The website is presently hosted on nearlyfreespeech.net, which is inexpensive and offers great freedom for developers. (If Creative Commons can offer similar hosting options, I will gratefully take up that offer.) I have been researching these technologies for several months, and have only lacked the opportunity to devote significant time to producing a product.
|challenges=While I am a competent programmer, I lack the experience professional programmers have acquired. For that reason, I am choosing "friendlier," established tools like PHP and Python, which are well-supported in their communities with a wealth of examples. I am designing for simplicity and sustainability, utilizing tools like Lilypond as it is packaged, rather than unnecessarily customizing (and complicating) a solution. In short, the majority of my project will be to interface the website to the database through PHP, and mechanize Lilypond/text file generation using python. Lilypond files can be created/alterred with a simple text editor, which will ease the burden of graphical input, especially if I utilize Javascript over a stand-alone application.
|sustainability=I expect that the technologies necessary to sustain the project will be finalized with the grant money, and the only remaining expenses will be the cost to host the site and periodic maintenance. Data entry and contributions will be voluntary. Until the site is successful, hosting costs will be negligible; when the project gains some success, it is hoped that donations will fund the project. Hard-copy publications of the hymns will be made available (retaining Creative Commons licenses, of course) to provide for that need and gain revenue.
|scalability=The work I am proposing, and for which I am requested the grant, is only the first step in what should be a scalable project. It is hoped that Open Lutheran Hymnal will become the primary resource of many Lutheran churches, and that the content will expand with that role as new hymns are written specifically to distribute through the site. It is also hoped that other CC-licensed liturgical materials can be distributed.
|resource needs=I expect no support from Creative Commons beyond the grant, but would be pleased if the project might be featured in an article to spread the word to my Lutheran community and like-minded individuals from other communities who can use my software for their purposes. If Creative Commons were able to host my project while allowing me the freedom my present host offers, that would also be appreciated.
|communication=I have only communicated my thoughts and hopes with fellow seminarians, some professors, and friends, most of whom are excited about it. Telephone and email will remain my communication with them, but mailing lists or videos from the site will be the means to communicate with the growing community.
|budget=OpenLutheranHymnal Budget.txt
|free text=I am moving out of state in mid-July for my paid internship as a chaplain, which will be my third of four years as a seminary student and starts in September. This proves a great opportunity to devote my energies full-time to developing the Open Lutheran Hymnal without sacrificing food and shelter. The $10/hr I have requested is modest wages for a programmer, and I believe will allow me the freedom to produce a professional, attractive, and suitable dynamic web page according to the parameters I have specified above. I have indicated that the project will be complete 30 September, 2010, to allow for final spit-and-polish even after my internship has begun and my priorities have shifted. Thank you for your consideration, and I hope you will grant me the opportunity to join in Creative Commons' mission as I feel called to express it in my faith community!
|legal=Yes
}}

File:OpenLutheranHymnal Budget.txt

2010-06-26T22:26:30Z

Dermusikman: $1600 for 160 man-hours of development, $950 to advertise in magazines reaching over 500,000 American Lutherans.

$1600 for 160 man-hours of development, $950 to advertise in magazines reaching over 500,000 American Lutherans.

Creative Commons - User contributions [en]

Grants/Open Lutheran Hymnal

File:OpenLutheranHymnal Budget.txt