Committee

There is a cross organizational working group that defines the direction of the Scripture Burrito specification. See the Github Contributors page for a list of everyone that has contributed code or documentation.

Current Membership

The working group meets regularly and is now comprised of the following individuals:

  • Chuck Barker
  • Eric Pyle
  • James Tauber (implementing developer)
  • Jesse Griffin
  • Joel Mathew
  • Jonathan Robie
  • Tim Steenwyk

Origins

The Scripture Burrito specification was started by the ETEN Project Portability Working Group which was formed after meetings in Philadelphia in July 2018 at American Bible Society. The group met several times virtually, culminating in two days of face meetings in Orlando on January 17-18, 2019. That meeting was attended by:

  • Han Chung
  • Jesse Griffin
  • Mark Howe
  • Joel Mathew
  • Tim Steenwyk
  • Benjamin Varghese
  • Andi Wu

At the above meeting the Scripture Burrito name was adopted.

Relationship to the Copenhagen Alliance

The Copenhagen Alliance seeks to bring together those with “… a common interest in making biblical language data free and openly accessible to anyone for research, language learning, translation, and other uses.” This partially overlaps with the remit of the Scripture Burrito committee. Several members of the Scripture Burrito committee are also involved in the Copenhagen Alliance in various ways.

The Scripture Burrito committee has focussed on providing a conceptual container, extensive metadata and a mechanism for specifying the type of resources within each flavor of Burrito. Because of its links with DBL and the Paratext ecosystem, the Scripture Burrito standard also inherits widely-used de facto standards for text and audio Bibles. The Copenhagen Alliance is resolutely resource-centered, defining common formats for Scripture-related data where no such format currently exists. These two areas of concern are distinct but related. Scripture Burrito assumes documented standards of the type that the Copenhagen Alliance promotes. True portability of data in Copenhagen Alliance formats requires good metadata and consistent packaging, both of which are Scripture Burrito core concerns.

The Copenhagen Alliance and Scripture Burrito will seek ways to co-operate whenever their work overlaps, notifying each other when such an overlap occurs. While the distinct concerns of each group provide a convenient way to divide responsibilities, it is quite possible that the Scripture Burrito committee may be the first to perceive a need for a particular format, or that the Copenhagen Alliance may identify specific metadata concerns before Scripture Burrito. The aim of both groups is to work together through regular communication, in an atmosphere of mutual respect, so that both groups may better serve the wider Bible translation and publication community.