Library Size

I never thought I'd say this but: I think most worthwhile public domain content is now in e-Sword format!

BibleSupport.com claims to have 5,218 resources for e-Sword 10.x. There are at least 5,000 resources for e-Sword, that are legally distributable, but are not available from BibleSupport.com. Round that off to 10,000 resources.

QuickVerse 2013 Platinum Plus claims 574 Volumes.  Depending upon your POV, I'm either being very mean, or very generous, in assuming that QuickVerse 2012 has the same number of STEP resources. Findex counted resources in its packages, the same that Libronix counts resources in its packages.

Logos 5 Portofolio Edition contains 2,585 resources. ( https://www.logos.com/comparison . That page defaults to Logos Gold Edition, Click on the link for Portfolio Edition, to see the details.)

The Maryland State Department of Education requires schools have a library collection of at least 12,000 items.  A middle school collection is expected to have 15,000 items, whilst a high school collection is expected to have at least 18,000 items. (http://articles.herald-mail.com/2008-04-14/news/25088737_1_library-collection-collection-size-school-year ).

Resources for e-Sword, and Logos are counted differently.  If resources were counted the same, then Logos Gold Edition (1,100 resources) is the more appropriate comparison. The school library counts individual volumes, which is what e-Sword does, rather than sets of volumes, which is what Logos does.

Using Logos 5 Platinum Edition as one's starting point, it is fairly easy for one's Logos Library to be the size of a Maryland High School Library.  (I am deliberately excluding the damage to one's wallet, in the definition of "easy". If one wishes to have 18,000 volumes, with minimal impact on one's wallet, download the books from The Internet Archive Archive.org, and Project Gutenberg Gutenberg.org .)

For e-Sword 10.x,  getting to the minimum Maryland School library size (12,000 volumes), is doable, if STEP resources are actively sought out. Getting to Maryland High School library size (18,000 volumes) requires one to be creating resources.

In terms of "worthwhile public domain resources", the most obvious lack, for e-Sword, is in Greek and Latin material.  More specifically, the complete corpus of the church councils, Papal bulls, Papal briefs, and encyclicals.

The second major omission is apocrypha and pseudepigrapha material.  More specifically:

• The texts that made it into the Bible, and then were removed: For example, 3 Corinthians;
• The texts that almost made it into the Bible: For example, Shepherd of Hermas, Acts of Paul;
• The texts that did not make it into the Bible: For example,  4 Baruch, 5 Maccabees;

The third major omission is liturgical material.
 Whilst:

•  Book of Common Prayer (USA) (1976);
• The Scottish Communion service of 1764; 

are available, what is lacking are:

• Texts that explain the liturgy, such as James Davis' Manual of the Book of Common Prayer;
•  Protestant liturgies, such as  A Book of Common Order;
• Catholic Liturgies, such as Tridentine Missae;

 Then there are huge swathes of Christianity, material for which, in e-Sword format, is almost completely lacking:

• Orthodox Christianity;
• Oriental Christianity;
• Celtic Christianity;

If it were not for Gravel Hill Church of Christ (http://www.gravelhillchurchofchrist.com/), resources for/about Restoration Movement Christianity would also be almost completely lacking.

Consequently, I disagree that most worthwhile public domain content is now in e-Sword format.

EULA / Bible Study Software

Bob Pritchett made an interesting comment in the thread at 
http://community.logos.com/forums/p/27872/206312.aspx. Specifically, «We design our software around a "purchase once, use anywhere" model—for the original purchaser.»

That attitude does soften the financial pain of purchasing resources for Libronix. 

The caveat is that the hardcopy publishers that license their content for Libronix may not agree with his interpretation.

Is e-Sword dead?

Mitchell Powell wrote "You heard it here first, folks. E-Sword is dead." in his blog ve'al timkor — ואל־תמכר on 15 September 2010).

He is not the first person to make that statement. Nor will he be the last.

I think that the first claim to that effect was made by the developer of Q-WordSpeak. More recently I've seen it used by users of TheWord.

It is a topic I broached on in:
* Selecting Bible Study Software;
* On Selecting Bible Study Software;
* The Death of Bible Study Software;
* My talk at BibleTech 2010 The Ecology of e-Sword;

Pocket e-Sword was the edition for Pocket PC 2003, Windows CE, and Windows Mobile 6.0.

e-Sword Live! was created for users of other platforms. The theory is that everybody would always have an available Internet Connection.

Rick has publicly stated that there will not be a WinMo 7 version of e-Sword, or Pocket e-Sword. He also announced on 12 December 2009, that further development of Pocket e-Sword would cease as of that day. All official support was also scheduled to cease 12 December 2009. All of the commercially distributed resources were pulled from the market on 31 December 2009. Since January 2009, at least half a dozen other organizations that create Bible Study Software have announced, either formally, or informally, officially, or unofficially, that development on their Windows Mobile platform offering had ceased.

e-Sword began life as a Bible Study Program for new Christians that did not know how to use a computer. The original axioms were:
* If a new Christian did not see the point of a feature, or of a function, then e-Sword would not offer that capability;
* If a non-computer user could not figure out how to do something, without consulting a manual, then e-Sword would not offer that capability;

Over time, things change. e-Sword has become far more complicated. Users are doing things with e-Sword that Rick never envisioned it being used for. Rick added features and functions to empower those "power users".

The future for e-Sword, is, at best, ambiguous.

e-Sword is a software program that one should grow out of. It is a program that should no longer meet one's needs, because one is no longer a new Christian that can only take milk. It is very easy for a user to mistake their change in software requirements, with a sense that e-Sword is dead.

For new Christians, e-Sword still remains one of the best offerings out there.

The challenge for e-Sword is whether it is to maintain its commitment to features and functions for new Christians, or whether to also offer more advanced features. There are at least half a dozen features, and components that could be added to e-Sword, that would be congruent with the original axioms of e-Sword development, and also enhance its functionality for "power users.

Libronix is still committed to its original market --- seminarians and clergy. At the same time, it has embarked on embracing the laity: the intermediate to mature Christian. With its offerings for the iPhone/iPad/iPod and Android, Libronix is well positioned to also engage the new Christian market. (Note: As of 20100918, the Android app is not publicly available. More precisely, only a very few people within the firm have a copy of it.)

Olive Tree is committed to the mobile market. Give them another year or two for development, and their apps should contain the same functionality as Libronix does. The issue Olive Tree will be facing is resources.

The Sword Project is the only FLOSS Bible Study Software to gain traction. Their major stumbling point is resources. Or, more precisely, the lack of them.
The nature of FLOSS is that since everybody has access to the source code, anybody can contribute code that provides functionality, features, or capabilities that they think the program lacks. As such, the various front ends will, in theory, eventually provide the same capability as Libronix currently does.

Laridian is committed to the mobile market. Their focus tends to be on the "New Christian" to "Intermediate Christian" market. I'm not sure what will happen to them when Libronix gets more mobile apps. It should remain a player, but.

Those are the only organizations that develop Bible Study Software, whose future can be considered to be "safe". The only players that will survive are those that offer their products on multiple platforms, and whose products can be easily synchronized between platforms.

e-Sword is not on that list, because it is available for only one platform --- Windows.
Accordance is not on that list, because it is available for only one platform --- Mac OS X.
TheWord is not on that list, because it is available for only one platform --- Windows.

Yes, I know that the software can, in theory, be run on other platforms, if one wants to install the prerequisite emulation software. Emulation software is an iffy proposition that provides for a temporary solution. A permanent solution requires the software to run as a native program, in the native environment. Not masquerades of 64 bit Win7 as 32bit Win7. No usage of WINE, or CrossOver. No usage of Parallels.

The closest Rick has come to saying that e-Sword will not be ported to other platforms, is in pointing users of other platforms to e-Sword Live!. He also points current users of e-Sword on Windows to that website. The original intent of e-Sword Live! was to be a Web 2.0 edition of e-Sword.

The future for e-Sword is ambiguous.

For the last four or five years, Rick has not made any public announcements about changes to e-Sword, until after the version with the changes was released. The few private statements he has made, have been in nature of the usefulness of the feature to the "typical" e-Sword user.

e-Sword Resource Format Specification 2 freed e-Sword from the restraints imposed by Microsoft. Most of the changes make it much simpler to migrate e-Sword to other platforms. The restraints here are:
* Financial cost of the hardware to develop and test the program on;
* Financial cost of acquiring the appropriate tool chain;
* Time cost of learning to use the appropriate tool chain;

The challenge and future of Bible Software in a Mobile World is one approach to cross platform development;
Beyond Mobility is a different approach to cross platform development;

What people tend to forget is that e-Sword is a very small operation. Between eStudySource and e-Sword, Inc, I doubt that there are more than four people who are paid --- including independent contractors and part time employees.


Possible Futures:

* e-Sword remains in Windows, and dies when either Microsoft, or Windows dies;
* e-Sword goes cross-platform, as a closed source program;
* e-Sword becomes an open source program;
* e-Sword clones appear;

Personally, I think that e-Sword will become cross-platform. Whether that will happen first on mobile devices, or other desktops is something I do not know. If you write something for the iPhone/iPad/iPod, you might as well also port it to Mac OS X. If you write something for Android, you might as well as port it to both *Nix, and Symbian.

Commercially distributed closed source software can be successful on *Nix, if it is sigificantly better than the competition. Gratis closed source software, that is not FLOSS, can be successful on *Nix, but only if it is better than the FLOSS competition. In both instances, it is the user that defines, and quantifies "better".

As an open source program, a major issue is being able to retain the right to use, and distribute resources for which royalties are currently payable. Several organizations that currently permit resources to be distributed in e-Sword format, will not allow their resources to be distributed for FLOSS programs.

Clones of e-Sword have been around since at least 2002. Some of those clones could utilize e-Sword resources. Some of those clones could not. With the changes in e-Sword Resource Format Specification 2, clones will not, in theory at least, be able to utilize official e-Sword resources. That won't negate the ability to utilize the thousands of user created e-Sword resources out there. Whether or not the absence of those thirty five commercially distributed resources, and the gratis official resources will make a difference to the clone coders, is something that remains to be seen.

In the meantime, use e-Sword, and recognize when your Bible Study has grown beyond the capabilities and functions that e-Sword was designed for.

If I had a million dollars (to grow Logos Bible Software)...

Quoting Bob Pritchard:

• Keyboarding the entire Patrologia Graeca
• Hiring 10 more software developers for one year
• Hiring 15 new sales representatives for one year
• Mailing $50 to every seminary student in North America (20,000) to entice them to watch our introductory video
• Building Logos compatible editions of 300 public domain books and giving them away to get people on our platform
• Mailing $2 to every pastor in North America (500,000) to entice them to watch our introductory video

Paying people to view a video is a waste of money.

Spend some of the money to create a video, and let the fans of the program distribute it. (108 fans on Facebook --- Students using Logos Libronix Bible Software. 70 fans at Logos Libronix Digital Library System Free PBB Books - personal book builder. 4,998 fans at Logos Bible Software. Remember Guy Kawasaki's message, when he worked for Apple.){Those were the numbers when I wrote my original draft. Some of them have increased significantly.}

Discounts tend to imply that the product is not worth the MSRP. When Sears switched to "everyday low prices", their revenue plummeted, because people were waiting for the non-existent sales. The virtue of discounts, is that people can think that they are getting a bargain. A not uncommon sales strategy is to determine the break even price, double that, then offer the product at a 25% discount. { The group discount that Logos offers is akin to the discount that a wholesaler would receive. That groups don't charge the individual members MSRP is a matter between the group and the individual, not Logos and the individual. As far as the gratis distribution of Logos goes, that is akin to the practice of virtually every retailer, wholesalers, and manufacturer --- some product is given away gratis to build goodwill, market share, or just sommor. }

The strength of Logos is in its resources. Specifically, Academic resources. Nobody is going to buy Logos just because it is the only Bible Study Program that offers Patrologia Graeca.
What the potential user will do, is add that resource to the list of other resources, when deciding between Libronix, Accordance, and BibleWorks. (For seminary, those are the only serious choices. The SBL Bible Software Shootout --- http://mobileministrymagazine.com/2009/11/report-on-bible-software-shootout-via.html --- provided a pretty convincing example of why those are the only suitable choices. )

On the face of it, adding 300 public domain resources sounds like a good idea. More to the point, adding one or two programmers to do nothing but convert content from Project Gutenburg, CCEL, The Internet Sacred Text Archive, etc sounds like a very good idea. Alternatively, adding the ability to integrate ePub, Mobi, or other common eBook format to Libronix would also add some useful functionality.

It probably would be far more useful to create tools that could be provided to publishers, that would automatically, and correctly convert their ePub, Mobi, PDF, or other e-Book reader formatted material into a format the Libronix reads. Tools whose quality output was such, that they would have no objections to commercially selling it. (Take a look at the results of the generic multi-output e-book generators and the results that they produce.)

However, the big question is: "What does this do for your core user --- the Seminary student and the Academic Professional?"

At this point in time: "Very Little".

Matt W's suggestion on lobbying Seminary professors and the like to submit a list the books on their required list, reading list, and supplementary lists, and converting that content to Libronix format focuses on the core strength of Libronix.

That enhances the value of Libronix for your core user.

Adding sales reps always sounds like an easy way to increase revenue --- especially if they a re paid straight commission. The eternal question is what functionality do sales reps add to your core products that five thousand fans on Facebook don't have? And don't forget that there are at least that many, if not more followers on Twitter. Go to any of the social networking sites, and you will find Libronix users. That is the real sales force. Not the individual that is hired to pitch the product at every church, seminary, and Bible Study group in the city.

If you know what you'll use those programmers for, hiring ten of them might be a good idea.
* Logos 4 for Mac to be functionally equal to Logos 4 for Windows;
* Logos 4 for Android;
* Logos 4 for Windows to run on *Nix using CrossOver or WINE. Obviously, it would be far better to have Logos 4 for Windows, but I realize that even at the current fifteen to twenty five percent market share, Linux does not appear to have the commercial software viability that is required for that big of an investment.

>To the best of my knowledge, e-Sword is one guy, Rick Meyers, who works at home.

Phil Stoner runs eStudySource, which is the commercial distribution point for e-Sword.
There are a couple of others who are periodically contracted to do specific things. That, essentially, is the core of those who are paid for e-Sword support, research, and development.

Everything else is run by volunteers, who are also users.

There probably are closer to 1.5 million users of e-Sword, than 9 million users. (There were 2.5 million downloads of e-Sword in 2009, but a number of them were people downloading it two, or more times. ) e-Sword-users.org currently (20100902 ) has 13 168 registered members. The eSword list currently (20100902 ) has 7 364 subscribers.

>Of course, nine million users sounds great. So we do keep experimenting with free low end stuff. http://bible.logos.com is free, and the Logos iPhone app offers 31 books simply for registering. In three months our iPhone app has had a number of downloads equal to three years of new customers for our desktop software. And some of those people have bought Logos 4. But the total sales volume of new users found via the free iPhone app hasn't yet covered our iPhone development costs.

The issue that Libronix is facing here is that good enough is the mortal enemy of perfect. For most people, e-Sword is good enough. But it goes deeper than that. Gratis undermines non-gratis. By focusing on the low-end market, you end up in a race to the bottom, if the competition is "good enough", and gratis. Furthermore, gratis does not pay the bills.

Giving the iPhone Logos app away makes sense, as a defensive measure. People with Mac OS X or Windows systems will be more likely to use Libronix on their desktop, than one of the other programs. (The ability to synchronize between desktop and mobile device is increasingly critical, even though people are not doing so. )

Peter Li suggested using the money to produce a technical solution for Bible Study Software developers to be able to "come up with a business and technical solution for the various major Bible software to work more seamlessly, and lessen the need for users to invest in overlapping resources from different Bible software vendors?"

That was tried with STEP: Standard Template for Electronic Publishing. AFAIK, Libronix didn't participate in that project. At BibleTech2008, Craig Reardon outlined some of the problems that STEP had.

There are three major issues that need to be considered here:
* What presentation markup language is to be used;
* Flat file, database, or a combination of the two;
* How cross platform are the resulting specifications?

The Crosswire Bible Society uses a flat file for its resources.
e-Sword and Libronix use a database for its resources.

Olive Tree uses their own presentation markup language in their resources;
e-Sword uses either RTF or no presentation markup language in its resources;
In the Beginning was the Word uses HTML for its presentation markup language.
If I understood the talk correctly, Bible Navigator X on the X-Box does not use a markup language.

OSIS and ThML are two proposed file formats/presentation markup specifications that could be used. The essay What a Biblical Scholar should know, at ( http://bibleandtech.blogspot.com/2007/12/html-xml-osis-xsem-thml-usfm-what.html ), covers it partially. Do we need an Open Publishing Standard or What at ( http://www.bsreview.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=71 ) is a slightly different take on the subject. Michael Johnson's essay Bible File Encoding at http://ebible.org/usfx/Bible-encoding.htm and remains that only comprehensive general purpose essay. The wiki page File Formats ( http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/File_Formats ) covers file formats from the perspective of The Crosswire Bible Society.

I'll won't rant about database engines here, other than to say I'm extremely glad the e-Sword switched to SQLite.

From the POV of the other Bible Software Developers, why should they switch to LLS, or some variant thereof? From the POV of Libronix, why should they have to share the details of the LLS structure to their competitors? [For all practical purposes, there is only one organization whose software has a chance of taking over, and dominating Libronix --- if it sets its mind to doing so. It is not Oak Tree Software. Nor is it e-Sword.]

Peter Li's suggestion about going to the cloud sounds nice. Just explain how you do Bible study on your desktop when there is no cloud? The Crosswire Bible Society solution is for that problem is for user to setup their own Bible Study Software cloud, if they don't want to use a front end with the content locally installed.