[WEB4LIB] Re: open source and librarianship

[Eric Hellman]

Perhaps a more interesting question for discussion is what flavor of 
open-source is appropriate and what the most important goals are.

As a software developer, my perspective is that the most important 
goal for the library community ought to be the opening of software 
interfaces. Coming from a non-library background, I perceive that 
library software vendors are not very oriented towards making one 
software package work with other software packages. As libraries 
become e-Libraries, this becomes less and less acceptable.

As an example; linking systems at publishers need to interact with 
holdings information at libraries; our LinkBaton system (which you'll 
hear more about later this week) is a small step in this direction. 
Ideally these systems should interact with procurement systems and 
aggregator systems.

In an ideal library network environment, premium information services 
ought to be able to work in harmony with free or lightweight 
components. You should be able to buy an Encyclopedia Java Bean and 
drop it into your Apache-based ILS server. When MySQL runs out of gas 
on your database, you should be able to plug in Oracle, and when 
Oracle squeezes all the money you have out of you, you should be able 
to switch to Informix.

I don't think a big GPL project is likely to encourage vendors to 
open their interfaces. I'd like to see public-domain interfaces 
established first. These would then define many smaller projects, 
some of which would be well suited to GPL development, others to 
commercial development, and others to public-domain contributions. 
(GPL forbids the use of code in proprietary derivative works, public 
domain does not.)

I think it's a mistake to look to Open-Source strictly for cost 
savings; we use Linux and Apache even though they've cost us more $$ 
than commercial solutions would have. It's the stability, security 
and performance that make them compelling solutions.

Openly publishes interfaces for its software, and I'm reminded that 
I've been meaning to release our java SICI classes for free; I just 
haven't had time! Feel free to give me a nudge if you're interested.

Eric

This is a great thread for Erics!
At 9:26 AM -0800 1/28/00, Eric Schnell wrote:
>At 02:02 PM 1/27/2000 , Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
>
>  >There were a number of things described in both texts that reminded me
>  >of librarianship.  First and foremost with the idea of sharing
>  >information.
>
>
>     Keen observation. We can also look at this parallel from another angle....
>
>      The goal for most libraries to provide a high level of service 
>as economically possible.   Many library consortiums were 
>established because economic / budgetary pressures forced libraries 
>to look for ways to obtain group discounts.  Now, libraries with 
>similar needs almost instinctively seek often each other out and 
>pool resources to achieve common goals.
>
>     The goal of most open source projects is to provide high quality 
>software as economically as possible.  Most open source projects 
>continue to exist because they have created an informal (or formal) 
>group of co-developers who also have a common goal: the need for a 
>specific piece of software.  Open source developers (and users) seek 
>each other out to pool resources to achieve common goals.
>
>      It seems almost a natural that libraries embrace open source 
>and establish open source consortiums in order to create and provide 
>quality information / technology services as economically as 
>possible.
>
>
>-Eric

Eric Hellman
Openly Informatics, Inc.
http://www.openly.com/           21st Century Information Infrastructure
LinkBaton: Your Shortcuts to Information  http://linkbaton.com/