As far as I am aware, John Piper gives away all of his written material on his website via PDF file for free!
So why does it cost money in Logos? Couldn't someone simply convert the free pdf's to Logos?
Thanks!
Piper gives away some of it, but not all of it.
Someone could try and convert some of the free material but that would entail work and that costs money (or time). Logos has converted what is available to them and is selling it. Vryso also has some of his other works that are not available as pdf's. I think Piper and Logos deserve payment for their work if they so desire.
Tom
Zach -
First, welcome to the forums! Several thoughts:
I am not suggesting Logos work for free, I don't think I even implied that in my post.
Most of his books (if not all) are free in PDF format on his website Desiring God. My main thoughts are if someone has put the pdf into logos via the PBB.
Thanks for the replies,
Zach
I think that we inferred that when you wrote:
So why does it cost money in Logos?
You asked:
My main thoughts are if someone has put the pdf into logos via the PBB.
Distributing these files would clearly break faith with Desiring God's intentions:
Online books are for personal use only. For web posting, please link to this page on our website. Any exceptions must be approved by Desiring God.
I would think that creating your own PB would be appropriate, but any distribution of these materials would be against the desires of Desiring God and hence break copyright.
My post was not suggesting that Logos sell things for free. That seems a pretty big logical leap to infer that.
My thinking was that if the books are free online, wouldn't logos be able to put them in Logos for free. But as you stated, the intentions for them being free is stated on the Desiring God website.
Your post helps though, thanks the response.
Another thing to consider: There is a difference in quality between a "Logos" resource and a "Vyrso" resource (which is more like an ePub or PDF). When Logos creates a "Logos Resource," there is considerable time put into making it fully searchable and tagged. When Logos sells a "Vryso" book, very little is done to it after it is received from the publishers other than the automatic creation of hyperlinks to scripture passages.
When you create a "Personal Book," you have the option of making it more like a Vyrso or Logos resource, depending upon the time and effort you want to expend.
creating your own PB would be appropriate, but any distribution of these materials would be against the desires of Desiring God and hence break copyright.
You know that for a fact? Does Piper ask that the free material on his site not be shared or converted to another format?
As I cited earlier:
If you share the document, it is no longer for "personal" use. If you post the document somewhere else, you have not "linked" to their website.
creating your own PB would be appropriate, but any distribution of these materials would be against the desires of Desiring God and hence break copyright. You know that for a fact? Does Piper ask that the free material on his site not be shared or converted to another format?
This is from Piper's webpage
© Desiring God
Permissions: Online books are for personal use only. For web posting, please link to this page on our website. Any exceptions must be approved by Desiring God.
So I would assume alabama is correct, or contact them for permission
This is from Piper's webpage © Desiring God Permissions: Online books are for personal use only. For web posting, please link to this page on our website. Any exceptions must be approved by Desiring God.
Thanks Ralph. Persponal use would lead me to think they would not care if you converted format from pdf to something you would personally use, such as pb. However, sharing would require permission.
Quick thought/question.
But does Logos 4 even allow you to add .pdf files? I seem to only see support for the .docx files.
Hi Zach
You are right that the Personal Book capability in Logos 4 only provides support for .docx files.
Some people have looked at a range of tools for converting pdf files to .docx files - there are various discussions on these tools in the forums.
Graham
Is Logos 4 planning on allowing PDF files?
Zach, the point is not about "allowing" files, but the point is that Logos needs to have a software program (PB compiler), that runs through the file and interprets the information contained in it as to formats, links etc. Think of it in analogy to an OCR reader software, that pulls text out of a scan. In order to work on the level of quality that Logos intends to have in PBs (same as Logos-produced resources), this means that unlike OCR, the compiler can't include a lot of guesswork and still produce a high rate of errors, but needs to be rather perfect. Logos have decided to support the *.docx format that internally is a highly structured XML with all bits of information neatly tagged (for a computer, not really human readable).
To "allow" PDF, they would need to write another compiler that understands the internal PDF format (note that we discuss text-based PDFs here, that for the most part were printed out of Word or another text program, not images such as scans). Now the PDF format has been designed not to work with the file's content, but to just display it. To really get meaningful information out of it, is obviously very complex. Given the unavailabilty of decent PDF to Word converters, I suspect this is even worthwile trying for Logos. But maybe some day...
Is Logos 4 planning on allowing PDF files? Thanks!
I am not aware of Logos ever mentioning they will support anything other then docx.
