Nicole Burchfield, aka Librarian, Interrupted asks why libraries are spending so much on licenses for software from Microsoft:

Why do libraries spend thousands of dollars a year on Microsoft Windows licenses for pc’s that are only used for access to the internet?

….

These computers often do absolutely nothing except provide access to the internet. So why not use Linux? And while we’re at it throw some open source software on there like Gimp and Open Office? All free, all useful to patrons - how can this not be the right thing to do?

I commented noting Howard County Library which is going completely open source - but there are several other libraries out there doing this very thing. I teach classes all over the country on open source and I always tell librarians that making the switch on their public PCs (if not all PCs) to Linux and all open source software is a great option. They get more security for less cost and they get to say that they support open source! What more could you want?

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 6:37 pm by Nicole C. Engard and is filed under Libraries, Linux, Open Source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.