I went to a discussion panel at ALA where a couple of library luminaries shared their views on library innovation. It was a good discussion all around and there were some great questions and comments from the audience. One recurring theme was the “reinforcement of the negative” that pervades the library landscape. For example, harping on how poorly some librarians are paid, how this or that branch closed down, or how people will rain down fire on organizations that try something new. The idea, basically, is that if we focus on the positive and shed our “culture of victimization” we’ll all have a more productive future moving forward. I couldn’t agree more.

At some point in the discussion, an audience member asked the panel to share their views on the effects of open source on library innovation. The panel members were all quick to say “well, yeah, obviously open source helps drive innovation.” Here’s the rub, though. One of the panel members works for a proprietary software vendor and you can guess he wasn’t going to let the conversation stop there. He started mumbling something about the total cost of ownership and how you have to hire real, hard-core developers to administer and maintain open source software. Obviously, we know where his bread is buttered and I expected no less, but I would like the opportunity for a rebuttal.

I would call the vendor’s response a good example of defeatism, exactly what the panel, and this person in particular, was railing at. Again, no real surprises, I’m just amused by public nuggets of hypocrisy. Additionally, I can provide mathematical proof that open source software with a vendor community is in fact better than proprietary software:

1. Assume your open source software is proprietary software and hire a vendor to install and maintain it.
2. We have thus proven that open source software is at least as sustainable an option as proprietary software
3. Now add the OPTION of accessing and understanding the code, contributing to the code, contributing to feature discussions, etc.
4. Having options is better than not having options. QED.

Oh, and no software licensing fees, having the option of changing support vendors mid-stream, getting support from public forums, blah, blah, blah…

-bill

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We’ve just completed a much-needed overhaul of the Open-ILS website. Many thanks go to Darin Givens and David Baker of the GPLS Communications Department.

If you happen to come across any broken links or other strangeness, please let us know. Thanks!

I’ve been asked about this many times over the past couple of weeks, so I figure the word is out. And, so I can clear out about a dozen emails in my inbox, I figured I’d post the definitive answer here:

Yes, the Evergreen project, by way of GPLS, has been approached by the Mellon Foundation.

We are still in the preliminary stages and are exploring what such a relationship would entail, but there are many exciting possibilities. Mellon, which has made a commitment to support only open source projects, is very interested in supporting the ILS space and has been looking for a way to help for some time. In their words, they selected Evergreen over other ILS’s because it is based on a highly-scalable, service-oriented enterprise-class architecture. We’d consider that a ringing endorsement!

Where do we go from here? One thought is to construct a software development consortium of like-minded affiliates to collaborate on Evergreen development. The thought is to include both public and academic libraries in this group. And like everything else we’ve done with the project so far, the existing community will play a big role in whatever happens on this front — we don’t want to disenfranchise anyone in the community, or slow the momentum we’ve built up.

Also, on a related note, there is the idea of Evergreen and the XC project working more closely together.

I will update the community as things develop and progress on this front.