open source

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Satisfaction with free/open source software survey

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

I know I’m late in posting this, but Brenda Chawner (a long-time expert on library open source software in New Zealand) has developed a survey for her PhD research that explores people’s satisfaction with free/open source software and their satisfaction with any F/OSS projects they’ve been involved in (MediaWiki, Koha, Drupal, MyLibrary, DSpace, etc.). If [...]

SOPAC 2.0 at Darien Public Library

Monday, September 1st, 2008

Run, don’t walk to check out the Darien Public Library’s awesome new Drupal-based website along with the John Blyberg-designed new-and-improved SOPAC 2.0. I, for one, am totally impressed with the site and the catalog. One of the biggest things about SOPAC 2.0 (short for Social OPAC) is that its component parts are going to be [...]

A personal ad for open source project help

Monday, December 24th, 2007

For several years, I have used Feed2JS. It’s a great tool that makes it easy to display an RSS feed on any web page and to style the content to match the page. Many libraries are using Feed2JS on their own websites; some host it on their own server (that’s what I do), while others [...]

Giving and Taking

Thursday, June 28th, 2007

Oh Meredith, why can’t you just write a nice, short, concise post?
I really don’t know what happens! I start writing and my fingers just seem to take over. This is what happens when my husband goes away and leaves me alone with my thoughts. Sorry folks!
Something I frequently think about when I go to [...]

DrupalEd is released

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

When we taught Five Weeks to a Social Library, we used Drupal and kind of had to hack it to make it work as a course management system. Too bad DrupalEd wasn’t out yet. But it is now!
The goal of this site is to create a flexible framework that allows for users to set up [...]

Lead, follow or get out of the way

Sunday, February 18th, 2007

I always tease Roy Tennant about how so many geek girls (me included) — and probably geek boys too — are totally crushing on him. He doesn’t really “get it”. I think his recent post in TechEssence, “Open Letter to ILS Vendors” is a great example of how smart, pragmatic and (as John Blyberg puts [...]

Open source alternatives!

Sunday, April 3rd, 2005

When I was talking to my dad and he told me that he had a copy of Adobe Acrobat’s PDF Writer, I realized that not everyone is up on the wonders of open source software. I wish I’d told him prior to his purchase that there is a great open source alternative that creates [...]

Firefox is on fire!!!

Wednesday, February 16th, 2005

I was very excited to hear, via Research Buzz, that Firefox has been downloaded more than 25 million times! That’s fabulous! Hopefully we’ll see it replacing Internet Explorer more and more in libraries.
Most of the library bloggers I know seem to use Firefox (or Safari), but I really haven’t seen it [...]

The community in computing

Monday, February 7th, 2005

The Linux Librarian has a great post on why open source and blogging are so great:
This is why open source works. From my comments, from yesterday, from James Robertson:
Hi,
I’m the main BottomFeeder developer. What system are you trying the app on?
What specific version [...]

OSS Patent Search

Monday, January 31st, 2005

For those interested in developing open source software based on the patents offered for free by IBM and others, PatentCafe has come out with OSS Patent Search Engine, a natural language patent search. It’s a new search engine and only has the 500 IBM patents in its database so far. It’s free to [...]

Open source in Brazil

Monday, January 31st, 2005

NPR this morning had a great story about how Brazil is switching 300,000 government computers from Windows to Linux. Not only are they switching to Linux, but they are dropping all proprietary software. The Brazilian government wants access to the source code of the software they use and control over their information (which [...]

Changing corporate image with open source

Thursday, January 27th, 2005

In light of IBM’s offer to allow use of 500 of their software patents for open source applications, Sun is now freely offering 1600 of its own patents for open source development. This comes on the heels of their announcement that they are open sourcing Solaris’ source code through the CDDL (Common Development and [...]

A new corporate approach to intellectual property

Thursday, January 13th, 2005

IBM is making 500 of its patents available for free to people doing open source projects. Rock on!
From the New York Times:
I.B.M. executives say the company’s new approach to intellectual property represents more than a rethinking of where the company’s self-interest lies. In recent speeches, for example, Samuel J. Palmisano, I.B.M.’s chief [...]

Exhuming McCarthy

Thursday, January 6th, 2005

Bill Gates recently sat down with CNET for an interview (which begins with the frightening teaser “Bill Gates is coming to your living room, whether you like it or not”). In it, Gates talks about the current state of intellectual property law and the recent challenges to it from certain “communist elements” in the [...]

Open Access

Thursday, December 30th, 2004

I guess this is the day to post intros! Peter Suber, at Open Access News, has published a very concise introduction to the concept of open access. A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access is a shorter version of his Open Acecss Overview. Both are great documents, though the former is certainly [...]

Where Google leads…

Saturday, December 18th, 2004

Here is an interesting article I found via Resource Shelf. The Open Archive Initiative (OAI) and Google Scholar by Nick Luft looks at one positive effect Google (and specifically Google Scholar) may have on digital publishing.
One of the greatest barriers to retrieving and exchanging scholarly information online is the fact that database vendors (and [...]

Linux more secure? Look at the statistics.

Wednesday, December 15th, 2004

According to Wired, a four-year study of the 2.6 Linux production kernel by Stanford University researchers has determined that there are 985 bugs in the 5.7 million lines of code. While this may seem a lot (it’s 0.17 bugs per 1,000 lines of code), compare that to the average piece of commercial software, which [...]

Linux vulnerabilities? What vulnerabilities?

Friday, December 10th, 2004

I know we always hear about how superior Linux is to Windows in terms of security, but most things I read primarily talk about what is wrong with Microsoft and never admit to any possible vulnerabilities with Linux. This Newsforge article is the first I’ve seen that actually tries to gauge how vulnerable [...]

Firefox and its way cool extensions

Friday, December 10th, 2004

Are you using Firefox yet? Well, why not? It is has so many advantages over Mozilla. Newsforge has an article about many of Firefox’s features including, improved speed, improved security features (including password-protected passwords), and tons of cool extensions you can add onto your browser.
And if you’re still browsing with Internet [...]

Citizen journalism meets the wiki phenomenon

Monday, November 29th, 2004

Amateur journalists take note: according to Wired, the makers of Wikipedia have now created Wikinews, which allows anyone to write and edit news articles (subject to a similar review process to that of the Wikipedia, of course).

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