I mentioned the Library Gang podcast yesterday - and today I read this over at ZDNet:

Even if an open source enterprise should go belly-up its code should survive. That code can be enhanced, it can be forked, it can be turned into another business, perhaps with another business model, down the road.

The code will be there because those who forged both the FOSS and open source movements believed first in what they could do for code, and only second in what code could do for them.

While proprietary business models may be based on a belief in the market, and a hope it will reward them, open source is based on something deeper, a belief in people and the work good code can do when it is shared.

So true - and one of the points I always cover in my classes on open source. One of the ways that open source is more secure than proprietary software is that the code will live on long after the companies (should the companies go away).

Technorati Tags: open source

I wasn’t able to talk on the recent Library 2.0 Gang podcast cause of all of the travel I have been doing. The topic sounded great though: “Library 2.0 Gang 10/08: Financial Crisis or an opportunity?”

Unless you have been living under a stone for the last few months, the turmoil in the world financial markets can not have escaped your notice, but how will this, and the inevitable recession that we are heading in towards, influence libraries and their suppliers?

Is the library world insulated from it? Does it mean that open source become more popular because it is perceived to be cheaper, or less because there will be less funding for those involved? Does it mean that pressure to purchase add-on components as against full systems will increase? What pressures will there be on the vendors both traditional and open source? Does this mean that libraries will become more or less significant in their communities? Is this an opportunity or a crisis or both?

Technorati Tags: library gang, library 2.0 gang, open source

I found a new blog this week and some webinars that may be of interest to you. Check out Library Open Source Webinars and their series of webinars:

Sign up now, mark your calendars and pick your favorite topics for this series of weekly webinars offering fun and informative stuff good for libraries. Here’s the line-up that’s filling out with more great speakers everyday:

11/4 Intro and Overview - Casey Bisson
11/11 OPACs/ILSs
11/18 Drupal in Libraries
Thanksgiving hiatus
12/2 Social Library and it’s Tools - Tasha Saecker
12/9 Plinkit and “Library web sites for all” - Darci Hanning
12/16 Google Sites and Apps for non-profits

Register now for individual webinars at $25 each, or for the whole series at the bargain rate of $100 for 6, at: http://www.wils.wisc.edu/events/opsource_reg.html

I just remembered a great OS quote I heard that I wanted to share with you all. I was reading this post by Matt Asay where he says:

Open-source software services tend to focus on giving enterprises a custom fit, whereas proprietary-software services focus on getting the software to work, and then later adding on customization as a separate consulting engagement.

The reason for this is clear: enterprises can download and kick the tires on open-source software without SI involvement. They can know - for free - whether the software will work. The proprietary world almost always requires payment before getting access to the software necessary to do such evaluation, whether it’s the upfront license fee or a paid proof of concept.

It reminded me of a speaker who said that with open source software you not only get to kick the tires but drive it cross country before you buy. Basically you can use the application just as you would in your real-world setting and see if it meets your needs and pin point areas where you might want improvements/changes.

I have been using Open Office on and off for years, but I must say that the newest release makes me want to stick to it.  This from Lifehacker:

The download may have hit a server near you last week, but today OpenOffice.org 3.0—the open-source Microsoft Office alternative—gets its official release. The OO.org servers have been hit hard, but so far download speeds seem to be holding up well.

If you haven’t tried it - now’s a good time to give it a whirl.

Technorati Tags: open office

If you have some time, take this survey on Open Source Satisfaction in Libraries:

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Information Management at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, and my research topic is an investigation of factors that influence participant satisfaction with library or information management free/open source software projects. Some library-related examples are DSpace, EPrints, Koha, Evergreen, Greenstone, and MyLibrary. More general information management software includes web content management software such as Drupal, wiki software such as MediaWiki or PmWiki, or blogging software such as WordPress.

If you use or are involved with a relevant project, I would like to invite you to complete an online survey. I am especially interested in hearing from people in a range of roles, for example user, developer, release manager, or system administrator. I am keen to have responses from people who have had either positive or negative experiences with free/open source software, to ensure that I get a perspective on factors that diminish satisfaction, as well as those that contribute toward it.

The results of this project will help developers of free/open source application software projects identify opportunities to increase user satisfaction, and it will also help users identify ways in which they might contribute to projects.

I expect the survey to take between 15 and 20 minutes of your time. You may receive several copies of this message, since I am sending it to a number of project and library technology email discussion lists; however, I ask that you only complete the survey once. If you have colleagues who you think would be interested in completing it, please forward this invitation to them.

The survey is available at:

http://surveys.sim.vuw.ac.nz/survey.aspx?surveyid=205

It will be available until Friday, 14 November 2008.

I will post a summary of the results to relevant project and library technology email discussion lists, once the thesis is finished in mid-2009. A copy of the thesis will be deposited in the Victoria University of Wellington Institutional Repository (http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/).

If you have any questions about this survey, please contact me at brenda.chawner@vuw.ac.nz or phone +64 4 463 5780. My supervisors are Professor Gary Gorman, email gary.gorman@vuw.ac.nz and Professor Sid Huff, email sid.huff@vuw.ac.nz.

Open Source the news:

The future for the BBC lies in the technology that can open it up to the world, just as technology gave it life last century. In the corporate world, Facebook, Apple and Google have launched platform services that allow external developers and companies to build services using their code - but the BBC is uniquely placed to use those same principles to create a cultural and commercial resource for the nation.

In post-Hutton 2004, startup investor and former BBC strategy manager Azeem Azhar proposed a “BBC Public Licence” that would allow both the public and business to use BBC content and code to build on, play with and share. It seems his vision is finally coming to life. “Four years on, the BBC is in a much stronger position to do this,” says Azhar. “It has the opportunity to create a new ecosystem, just as MySQL [the open source database system], as a platform, created an ecosystem around itself.”

Read more of The BBC can be an open source for all of UK plc by Jemima Kiss

This found via Code4Lib:

Implementing or hacking an Open Source discovery system such as VuFind or Blacklight? Interested in learning more about Lucene/Solr applications?

Join the development teams from VuFind and Blacklight at PALINET in Philadelphia, November 6, 2008, for day of discussion and sharing. We hope to examine difficult issues in developing discovery systems, such as:

* ILS Connectivity
* Authority Control
* Data Importing
* User Interface Issues

Date and time: November 6, 2008, 9:00am to 4:00pm

Registration Fee: $40 for PALINET members and $50 for PALINET non-members.

For more information and how to register, visit our conference wiki:
http://opensourcediscovery.pbwiki.com

The results of a survey from last year have been published online.

This survey was conducted from October 30, 2007 to January 3, 2008. It was answered by libraries using the open source ILSs Koha (n=113) and Evergreen (n=119), and proprietary ILSs (n=129). The current version of Koha was 2.2.9 and Evergreen was 1.2.

There are a lot of results to read through, I have only skimmed it so far, but I wanted to share it with you all so that you too could read it.