[Web4lib] An Analysis Of Open Source ILS Market Penetration

[Dan Scott]

On 15/10/2007, Rick Mason <rcmason at rsproductions.net> wrote:
>
> One thing that struck me was how Molyneux starts off by pointing out the
> "relationship" between Equinox and two early adopters of Evergreen (also
> note that the first comment to the  one of those two "relationships").
>
> I was curious, did a quick Google search, and found this:
> http://tinyurl.com/27axl9
>
> Same person?  The only reason this seems significant to me is because he
> pointed out those relationships in his introduction, but doesn't mention
> his own with SirsiDynix (assuming they are the same person).
>
> This isn't to suggest that any of his data is suspect.  In fact, his
> numbers seem correct at first glance.  Evergreen is brand new, and
> companies offering support for either product are also relatively
> recent.  Most libraries are involved with multi-year ILS contracts, and
> the process of switching to a different ILS is complex and time
> consuming.  Assuming that Koha and Evergreen are wildly successful,
> their growth will still be relatively slow based on the time and effort
> involved to switch.
>
> A comment that I saw mentioned on another list (NGC4lib) seems
> appropriate: "It'll be interesting to see how this table compares to one
> in a year from now." (credit to Deb Bergeron)  I personally think that
> five years will be the really interesting version of the table.
>
> Rick Mason
>
> Blake Carver wrote:
> > An Analysis Of Open Source ILS Market Penetration
> > http://features.lisnews.org/features/07/10/15/118229.shtml
> > This ILS Market Analysis was written by Bob Molyneux contains
> > preliminary figures might be of interest to the web4lib readers.
> > Bob looks at which U.S. public & academic libraries currently run open
> > source ILS software, and how Koha and Evergreen usage stacks up.
> >
> > "There are a number of ways one might measure the impact of open
> > source ILS software on U.S. public libraries but I think these
> > preliminary figures are suggestive: that few of these libraries
> > actually use open source software as a means of supplying their ILSs.
> > Of course, we know that many more have announced and the market is
> > dynamic. When I revisit these figures, I suspect the numbers will
> > change but the size of the library market is quite a bit larger than
> > the open source community has supplied. Its impact on the market is
> > around 1%, depending on which measure one uses and by the restrictive
> > criteria I use here."
> >
> > You can read the report and see his tables for comparison at
> > http://www.lisnews.org/features/07/10/15/118229.shtml
> >
> > -BLake Carver
> > LISNews.org
>
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>


To be fair to Bob Molyneux, it can be difficult to describe the nature of
relationships at individual and institutional levels in the open source
development community. As a faculty member of Laurentian University I am
acting as a representative of my institution and one could argue that we are
therefore working in partnership with Equinox Software Inc. on improving
Evergreen. It is parallel to saying that IBM and Oracle are working in
partnership to improve the Linux kernel. As noted in my comment to the
story, that does not necessarily translate into a contractual agreement to
procure Equinox's support services.

I will say as an individual developer for Evergreen (please note that here I
am _not_ speaking on behalf of Laurentian University) that, based on my
experiences of the past year, Equinox is the only company at this point in
time that has demonstrated the depth of expertise and understanding of the
Evergreen code base that a library looking for support, training, and custom
development services should demand. Equinox is the only company that has
demonstrated their depth of understanding of Evergreen by contributing code
(probably somewhere in the realm of 98% of the Evergreen code has been
written by employees currently working for Equinox), writing documentation,
and offering help on the mailing lists for the Evergreen project. This is
one of the great advantages of an open-source product: if you require
outside services, not only can you often choose between companies to provide
that service, you can evaluate the competence of a given company to meet
your needs based on their employees' publicly visible record of
contributions to the project.

I do hope this situation changes in the future; it would be fantastic for
the Evergreen project if a mix of for-profit companies, non-profit
companies, consortial support groups, and lone wolf developers were all
actively contributing to the project. But these are still relatively early
days for Evergreen, so it should come as no surprise that the Evergreen open
source community is still in the buzz & growth phase from a
single-consortium miracle to a broader base of adoption. As more sites adopt
Evergreen, the rough edges of the install / configuration / ease of
administration will be progressively smoothed out, more documentation will
be written, and more features will be implemented -- and the project will
gain in momentum correspondingly. I agree with some of the other posters; it
will be extremely interesting to see where things are in five years.

-- 
Dan Scott
Laurentian University