Open Scriptures

There’s been some recent buzz surrounding Bob Pritchett’s talk Network Effects Support Premium Pricing at the O’Reilly TOC Conference. The exciting thing about Bob’s message is that it is already at the core of what Open Scriptures is about. As Sean Boisen quotes from the Huffington Post:

When you purchase a book from [Logos], you’re not just getting a static ebook, you’re buying into a dynamic, integrated online application environment that becomes richer with each new publication, and with each new member to their community.

Further, Antoine Wright writes in The Network Effects of Bible Software:

Wish that MMM could take credit for this line of thought, but really, this is where mobile and web are going. The idea is that the effects of mature networks and platforms are going to turn traditional models of software ownership on its head. Those companies who lead or adapt quickly to this trend will find the business side of the connected economy easier to deal with. Those who wish to lock people into the former model will have a harder time growing marketshare, and might find their content – while the same as a network/platform – diminished in value because it cannot be extended by the user or user communities to draw even more relevance and value from it. Get your networks/platforms/apps ready, things are changing.

So the key offering of Logos Bible Software is not simply a collection of electronic resources, but rather it is the network of resources; that is, their key product is Linked Data, which is more than the sum of its parts. This is why Logos has the edge on all of the free resources out there: they have created links between these free resources, and it is these proprietary links that they sell as their product. Each link from a data point becomes a connection, a bridge that opens it up to a network of related information which adds an immeasurable amount of value to the data. So like Logos, the Open Scriptures project seeks to forge links between resources to create a network of data. Our aim diverges from Logos in that we want to make these links openly available for free under the Creative Commons Share-Alike license, and to provide a standardized API with which to develop applications on top of the linked scriptural data. Our goal is not to destroy Logos’ core product of linked data, but to provide a core subset of linked scriptural data that can be used to power applications of scripture, and to do so embracing the Web as the open platform.