http://freerangelibrarian.com/2009/11/11/abram-on-open-source-all-i-can-really-say/

I could quibble about your representation of OSS versus proprietary systems (and some of us had strong issues with Liblime, yes, even before we went to work for a competitor), but that is beside the point. The key is you make an excellent argument that some vendor reps (and I include OCLC in this group) get a free pass and others do not, something I have never understood. I would add that it is not lost on some of us that there is a huge gap between what some of the front people say and what their companies do. I find it offensive to be hectored from public forums about what libraries should be doing by vendors that make it difficult or impossible to reach those goals.

I do agree with you though that it is good that there are increasingly more free software alternatives available now. I also find it heartening that proprietary vendors are having to resort to misinformation and scare tactics to try and keep users. It is a sign of desperation and real fear on their part.

If someone bought a car knowing that the hood was welded shut, that was the choice they made (a foolish choice, but no ethical lines were crossed). If they were not told about this issue with the car, then it is unethical.

That’s my roundabout response to your second point. Give open source projects time and money–and start now, rather than later–and it won’t be long until open source is the best solution to every problem for every library.

I simply disagree with your first point. I believe there are companies, including library vendors, who refuse to behave unethically. By definition, that means they’d go out of business before they’d compromise their ethics. Which means their bottom line, while important, is not their top priority.

But statements like the following are pretty dangerous:

“They’re all trying to sell something to libraries, right? They all want to make money from us.”

“And all of them will put the good of their company over the good of libraries. That doesn’t make them evil — it makes them good businesspeople.”

This kind of thinking lumps people like Craig Newmark and Warren Buffett in with people like Kenneth Lay and Bernie Ebbers. And it helps to excuse library administrators who make technology decisions based primarily on sticker price, GUI, and what everyone else is already using.

Control over the data matters. Control over the software that manipulates and the data and presents it to users matters. We’ve already ceded control over the metadata that accompanies serials, and, in many disciplines, we’re losing ground on controlling access to the content of those serials as we lease more and more journals instead of buying them.

Of course there are plenty of gray areas, and I agree with your main point: pretending everything is black and white leads to shoddy thinking. But it’s just as shoddy to look at black (or white) and see shades of gray.