One One of the biggest advantages of open-source software, if not the biggest, is that under most licenses no fees need to be paid to the developer of the software to use it. So the use of open source technologies can become a tremendous cost savings to developers individually as well as corporations. I have been looking for a bit of code for doing PDF generation lately. And right now I cannot afford to drop $500 for a nice PDF code library. But, I did find some pretty nice open-source solutions so I will still be able to get the job done despite my economic constraints.
Similarly, having free resources online would be a tremendous benefit for those who need good biblical studies materials. The most obvious people who could use free, high-quality biblical studies tools are those who have access to the internet but live in countries/areas that are at a much lower socio-economic level than many in the United States. Most do not have enough money to get all the resources they really could use. There are very few people who could not benefit from more high-quality freely available biblical studies resources.
Another important question concerns how free the data really is, and different projects or sponsoring organizations may cause this to differ between projects. What we certainly need is more resources that are freely available, usable, and distributable for personal, academic, and non-profit use. Some projects perhaps should belong in the public domain, but it is not necessary for this to be the case for a project to be maximally useful to the general public. This decision must be made on a case by case basis.
Collaboration Is Often Key
Collaboration is more often than not essential to doing good work. Think of all the biblical studies resources that exist today that depend on collaboration. Commentaries certainly do. Just read the footnotes and you will find that your favorite commentary’s ideas are rarely new to that writer. They were drawing on the work of others. The great works of syntax, or the lexicons of biblical studies are the combined efforts of many people in this same respect. Rarely will you find anything that does not depend on something else to a certain degree.