STEP was conceived in 1995[1] by Craig Rairdin of Parsons Technology and Jim VanDuzer of Loizeaux Brothers Publishers.
Rairdin and VanDuzer formed a consortium of Biblical software publishers called the Bible Software Industry Standards Group (BSISG) to oversee the development of the STEP specification and to develop common tools to be used by developers and publishers interested in implementing STEP compatibility in their programs or publishing books in the STEP format.
The STEP logo was originally a trademark of Parsons Technology, Inc., now of FindEx, Inc., the current publisher of QuickVerse Bible Software.
The files use Microsoft's Rich Text Format (RTF) with special STEP tags added.
[2] While not fully open format, as was sometimes claimed, the specifications have been publicly released, enabling third parties to write their own tools to create, edit, or view STEP resources.