If you’re in the area and want to learn about open source, you might want to attend this event at the Cherry Hill Public Library hosted by the South Jersey Regional Library Cooperative:
“Open Source” - a term you may have heard thrown about at conferences and on mailing lists - but what does it mean? This session will not only define the term “Open Source” but will show librarians exactly how it can be used within their libraries.
Learn to separate the myths from the facts, learn about the tools that are available to your libraries and most importantly learn about how open source can free you from the costs associated with many proprietary library products. Click here for complete details and registration form.
If you can’t make this one, check out my presentation schedule to see other classes I’m offering on open source.
I’m still giggling after reading this very insightful article. Ryan Cartwright makes some great points about trying to compare GNU/Linux with Windows or Mac OS. The main point? They’re not the same! It’s like comparing apples to oranges.
Ryan talks about the a post by Erna Mahyuni where she explains why Linux cannot compete in the “consumer desktop market.” Ryan goes point by point showing, not only that you can’t compare Linux to Windows with the same criteria - but that Erna makes some silly arguments.
On of which is:
The average consumer just wants to be able to pop a CD into his optical drive, wait 10-15mins and have a working operating system.
to which Ryan replies:
The average consumer wants what? And in how many minutes? Has this blogger ever tried to install Windows? Sorry but this is just a ridiculous claim. Show me this average consumer who wants to install their OS? Show me any modern OS that installs in 15 minutes (best I’ve achieved is 18 and I’ll assume live CDs are not allowed here). Most of the average users I know would rather buy a new PC than upgrade Windows. No, users wanting to install an OS in 15 minutes is a pure straw-man argument.
One of the best arguments that Ryan makes is:
“Dummy-proof” is a moving target. It’s one of those circle-of-life things (as Disney like to say). If you make something simple to use, there will soon come along another set of users too lazy, stubborn, or apathetic (but rarely too “stupid”) to learn how to use it properly. The answer is not (always) to make it easier to use —by which most people seem to mean “hide half the functions”— but to make learning it more interesting. The quality of a user experience should not be judged by the cuteness of the help avatar or the number of steps in a wizard (or even by calling it a wizard). It should also be about how much it enhances your life/work, widens your perspective and awakens the child-like hunger to learn in you. It should make you want to show off what you can do to your friends. Well it is if you ask me but I’m not sure any software, free or proprietary, has achieved that yet. Still it’s a good target.
You really should read the entire article if you get a chance - it’s very enlightening.
Tim Spalding at LibraryThing is calling librarians to help him develop an open source alternative to Dewey:
I hereby invite you to help build the Open Shelves Classification (OSC), a free, “humble,” modern, open-source, crowd-sourced replacement for the Dewey Decimal System.
I’ve been speaking of doing something like this for a while, but I think it’s finally going to become a reality. LibraryThing members are into it and after my ALA panel talk, a number of catalogers expressed interest too. Best of all, one library director has signed on as eager to implement the system, when it comes available. Hey, one’s a start!
The Call. I am looking for one-to-five librarians willing to take leadership on the project. LibraryThing is willing to write the (fairly minimal) code necessary, but not to lead it.
As leaders, you will be “in charge” of the project only as a facilitator and executor of a consensus. Like Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, your influence will depend on listening to others and exercising minimal direct power.
For a smart, newly-minted librarian, this could be a big opportunity. You won’t be paid anything, but, hey, there’s probably a paper or two in it, right?
Why it’s necessary. The Dewey Decimal System® was great for its time, but it’s outlived that. Libraries today should not be constrained by the mental models of the 1870s, doomed to tinker with an increasingly irrelevant system. Nor should they be forced into a proprietary system—copyrighted, trademarked and licensed by a single entity—expensive to adopt and encumbered by restrictions on publishing detailed schedules or coordinating necessary changes.
In recent years, a number of efforts have been made to discard Dewey in favor of other systems, such as BISAC, the “bookstore system.” But none have proved good enough for widespread adoption, and license issues remain.
I wrote over at my other blog today about the exodus from Twitter to FriendFeed. One commenter pointed me to identi.ca as an alternative, but forgot to mention that it was based on open source software. This from OStatic:
Lots of people are addicted to microblogging service Twitter - including substantial chunks of some open source communities. There are a fair number of Ruby on Rails developers twittering these days, for example. But Twitter’s scaling and reliability issues lately have many people wondering whether it’s time to look for an alternative. Identi.ca, backed by open source package Laconica, wants to be that alternative.
I’m not making any switches right yet - but it will be interesting to watch how identi.ca handles the pressures that Twitter couldn’t.
I want to note that Venezuela’s National Library doesn’t publish news in English, so I’m quoting an unofficial source, but this is still awesome!!
On the first half of 2008, Venezuela’s National Library (BNV) evaluated the Koha ILS and other FLOSS-based ILSs, together with a proprietary ILS, and decided to deploy Koha in two phases for the Library’s catalogue, which includes more than two million records, and the National Public Library System.
Anaheim, CA–July 1, 2008–LibLime, the leader in open-source solutions for libraries and the eXtensible Catalog (XC) project– an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded project currently underway at the University of Rochester’s River Campus Libraries– have announced a new partnership agreement to ensure future compatibility between the XC project and Koha, the first open-source integrated library system.
The XC/LibLime partnership will ensure that the open-source software being developed as part of the XC project and the Koha open-source integrated library system will be fully compatible with each other, enabling current and future users of Koha to take advantage of the added capabilities for managing and distributing metadata that XC will offer. These benefits include facilitating the ability to combine legacy metadata with emerging schemas, and delivering library content to web content management and learning management systems.
Keep the open source library partnerships coming!!
The Netgear Open Source Router is aimed specifically at running third-party, open-source firmwares like previously mentioned Tomato or DD-WRT. We’ve covered installing these firmwares on supported routers here and here, but Netgear’s Open Source Router is unique in that it’s designed specifically to support these open-source projects; Netgear has even created a community web site where enthusiasts can contribute guides and more. The Netgear Open Source Router costs $57 from Amazon.
In my open source talk I use data from a Forrester study that says that businesses are using open source for mission critical applications. This is why I found it interesting to read Matt Asay’s report that Forrester now says that virtually no one is using open source.
I generally like Forrester’s work, but this survey flies in the face of every piece of research on open source that I’ve seen in the last five years…including research from Forrester. Also, as the research itself finds, often its survey respondents are using open source even when they don’t know it: Nearly half of those surveyed by Forrester who are using open-source frameworks (e.g., Spring) still claim they are not using open source.
Forrester’s newest research finds:
Seventy percent of decision-makers responded that they don’t have interest or have no plans to adopt open-source software;
Only 23 percent of respondents said expanding their use of open-source software was a priority;
Security is the main concern around adopting open-source software. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said it was an important or very important concern.
Matt goes on to provide some great stats on how open source is being used - and some of the data is even from Forrester.
I’m a bit behind on my open source news reading - so if you knew this already - sorry for the repeat.
Today, the #1 competitor to Digg, Condé Nast’s Reddit, says “Screw you guys, we’re going transparent”. That’s not an actual quote, but the company’s actions say that in a nutshell.
Condé Nast is opening up Reddit’s codebase to developers, your moms and dads, your pet fish, and whoever else has a computing device hooked up to the interwebs.
This announcement via DownloadSquad. On the new Reddit code page you can find more information about the secret sauce behind this social news tool.
We’ve always strived to be as open and transparent with our users as possible, and this is the next logical step. When we say ‘open-source’ we mean specifically that the code behind reddit is available to the public for download, and we’re inviting the public to submit code to help improve the site.
Reddit is unique in the social news scene in that we have a huge community of developers. It seems only natural that we give you all in that community a chance to contribute back to reddit and make it a better place for everyone. We know reddit’s success has less to do with our technology than it does with you, our community, and now we want to let our community improve our technology.
