Ever since the news of LibLime’s enterprise version of Koha and whether or not their actions consisted a fork of the code, I’ve been thinking about how black and white some of us (me included, at times) tend to see library products and library vendors. Stephen Abram’s “position paper” on open source ILSes got me …
I just love that feeling of serendipity when I find that people are thinking about the same things I am at the same time. Karin Dalziel made an impassioned case for every librarian to learn how to program. Dorothea Salo responded to it and described how she thinks technology should be taught in library school. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 PDFs …
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 on library public …
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 did you try? Thanks This is why open …
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 search the …
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 includes security …
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 Distribution …
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 executive, …
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 digital …
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 easier to digest …
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 …
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 has …
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 Linux may …