Two of my favourite blogs are LibrarianInBlack and Librarians' Index to the Internet. These blogs are perfect for eclectics—magpies—like me, who like to know a little bit about anything and everything. For example, today the LibrarianInBlack referred me to Lewis Caroll's Scrapbook Collection. The Librarians' Index to the Internet referred me to information about battlefield medicine at the time of the American Civil War. The other day I found a reference to Koha, the world's first "open source integrated library system", created by Katipo Communications Ltd. back in my home country of New Zealand.
I have had the good fortune to participate recently in some interesting conversations with a head librarian. We have talked a lot about the impact of the Internet on libraries. Koha is an open source system, and, because open source is a key component of my business rationale, I couldn't resist sending him the Koha link.
This was his response:
Hi Mark - thanks. I remain a bit cautious (instinctive, don't know why) about open source. But lateral thinking, eh. There are lots of commercial products in that Market [...] good added-value I feel sure.
I think this caution is completely understandable. It is a caution expressed by many people who are in the position of having to make significant Information Technology infrastructure spending decisions. What I want to show is that open source has already entered the mainstream, and that there are reasons, both obvious and subtle as to why open source is appropriate to an environment like a library.
Let's look at an example of an open source solution that has a huge market lead over its closed source counterparts. The web server market is huge, with over 50 million deployed web servers (as monitored by Netcraft). A web server must be reliable and it must be secure; businesses depend on it. As seen on this graph, nearly 70% of web servers run the open source Apache web server. Microsoft has made efforts to muscle into the market with its own offering, IIS, which comes bundled free with Windows Server. Despite this strategy, the proportion of IIS installations has dropped steadily since 2002. You can search the Internet to find plenty of opinions as to why this might be.
In the case of web servers, open source is free (as in "free beer"), is arguably more secure, and is arguably more reliable. These are desirable qualities in software chosen for any organisation, including a library. I think though, that there are other subtle reasons why open source solutions are worth investigating, particularly in a library situation.
Open source has gained a lot of mindshare in government circles. In Europe and China it appears there are political motivations to avoid lock-in to software developed in the United States. Perhaps the Microsoft anti-trust trials of the early part of this decade have had an influence. Open source, by its nature, is about the free exchange of information. Free, as in “free speechâ€. Commercial players tend to want to lock you in to their solution and make it difficult for you to export your information to a competitor's system. It's not in the self-interests of a commercial outfit to allow you to easily export your information to another system.
So why do we keep using closed source solutions? Open source is a new paradigm. It's hard to draw parallels between it and anything that has gone before. This provides commercial companies with a means to fight its adoption. When confronted with open source competitors, many commercial outfits employ a marketing strategy that spreads FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). It's a clever strategy and an effective one in a world where we often buy products on branding alone. The Internet (blogging especially) provides a mechanism to get to the heart of a matter, find benchmarks, comparisons, support, help and advice from everyone, not just the corporations who are selling.
Gradually though, things are changing, perceptions are changing. My brother describes open source adoption as being a little like a house of cards. When one goes, the rest will follow: Munich, Bergen, and now the New Zealand Stock Exchange. What could once have been described as 'lateral thinking' looks more and more longitudinal.
