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Note: a significantly edited version of this article appeared in the August 1, 1999 issue of Library Journal. You might prefer their edited version to this version. You are free to reproduce the text of this version for any purpose
and in any format, provided that you reproduce it in its entirety (including this notice) and refer to the url from which
it is available: http://oss4lib.org/readings/oss4lib-getting-started.php Introduction The biggest news in the software industry in recent months is open source. Every week in the technology news we can read about
IBM or Oracle or Netscape or Corel announcing plans to release flagship products as open source or a version of these products
that runs on an open source operating system such as Linux. In its defense against the Department of Justice, Microsoft has
pointed to Linux and its growing market share as evidence that Microsoft cannot exert unfair monopoly power over the software
industry. Dozens of new open source products along with regular news of upgrades, bug fixes, and innovative new features for
these products are announced every day at web sites followed by thousands.
The vibe these related events and activities send out is one of fundamental change in the software industry, change that alters
the rules of how to make software--and how to make money selling software. What is all the noise about, and what does it mean
for libraries?
Open Source: What it is and Why it Works If you've ever used the internet, you've used open source software. Many of the servers and applications running on machines
throughout the wired world rely on software created using the open source process. Examples of such software are Apache, the
most widely used web server in the world, and sendmail, "the backbone of the Internet's email server hardware." [TOR] Open
source means several things:
Open source software is typically created and maintained by developers crossing institutional and national boundaries, collaborating
by using internet-based communications and development tools;
Products are typically a certain kind of "free", often through a license that specifies that applications and source code
(the programming instructions written to create the applications) are free to use, modify, and redistribute as long as all
uses, modifications, and redistributions are similarly licensed; [GPL]
Successful applications tend to be developed more quickly and with better responsiveness to the needs of users who can readily
use and evaluate open source applications because they are free;
Quality, not profit, drives open source developers who take personal pride in seeing their working solutions adopted; Intellectual property rights to open source software belong to everyone who helps build it or simply uses it, not just the
vendor or institution who created or sold the software.
More succinctly, from the definition at www.opensource.org: "Open source promotes software reliability and quality by supporting independent peer review and rapid evolution of source
code. To be certified as open source, the license of a program must guarantee the right to read, redistribute, modify, and
use it freely." [OSS]
Software peer review is much like the peer review process in research. Peer review bestows a degree of validity upon the quality
of research. Publications with a high "trust factor" contribute ideas in published works to the knowledge base of the entire
communities they serve.
It is the same for software. As described in the seminal open source work, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric Raymond,
author of the popular email program fetchmail, the debugging process can move faster when more individuals have both access
to code and an environment in which constructive criticism is roundly welcomed. [ER] This leads to extremely rapid improvements
in software and a growing sense of community ownership of an open source application. The feeling of community ownership strengthens
over time because each new participant in the evolution of a particular application-- as a programmer, tester, or user--adds
their own sense of ownership to the growing community pool because they are truly owners of the software. This community effect
seems similar to the network effect seen across the internet, whereby each additional internet user adds value to all the
other users (simply because each new user means there are more people with whom everyone else might communicate). For open
source products which grow to be viable alternatives to closed-source vendor offerings, this growing community ownership begins
to exert pressure on the vendors to join in. [NYT]
This tendency shares a striking similarity to the economic value of libraries. A library gives any individual member of the
community it serves access to a far richer range of materials than what that individual might gather alone. At an extremely
low marginal cost to each citizen expensive reference works, new hardcover texts, old journals, historical documents and even
meeting rooms might be available through a local library. The library building, its collections, and its staff are infrastructure.
This infrastructure serves as a kind of community monopoly in a local market for the provision of information. Instead of
reaping monopoly profits for financial gain, however, a library returns the benefits of its monopoly to individual users.
The costs of maintaining this monopoly are borne by the very community which holds the monopoly. To the extent which this
model works in a given community, a library is a natural yet amenable monopolistic force. If this sounds mistaken, consider
whether your community has libraries which compete or cooperate.
Library Software Today No software is perfect. Office suites and image editors are pretty good; missile defense systems are, for all we know, appropriately
effective; search engines could use improvement but usually get the job done. While there is constant innovation in library
software, for many of us online catalog systems mean a clunky old text interface that often is less effective than browsing
stacks. Often, this is due to the obstacles we face in managing legacy systems; new systems might be vastly improved, but
we are slow to upgrade when we consider the costs of migrating data, staff retraining, systems support, and on and on. Sometimes,
new versions of systems we currently use are just not good enough to warrant making a switch.
This is not surprising. The library community is largely made up of not-for-profit, publicly funded agencies which hardly
command a major voice in today's high tech information industry. As such, there is not an enormous market niche for software
vendors to fill our small demand for systems. Indeed the 1997 estimated library systems revenue was only $470 million, with
the largest vendor earning $60 million. [BBP] Because even the most successful vendors are very small relative to the Microsofts
of this world (and because libraries cannot compete against industry salary levels), there are relatively few software developers
available to build library applications, and therefore a relatively small community pool of software talent.
What are we left with? Some good systems, some bad. Few systems truly serve the access needs of all of our users, failing
to meet a goal--access for everyone--that most public libraries strive to achieve at more fundamental levels of service. Because
libraries are community resources, we tend to be quite liberal about intellectual and physical access issues, including support
of freedom of speech and ADA-related physical plant modifications. At the same time, librarians are very conservative about
collections and data (remember the difficult issues when you last weeded?). Is it not odd, then, that market forces lead us
to be extremely conservative about online systems software? After all, online systems are no less about access to information
than having an auto-open front door or an elevator in a library building.
We read of exciting technological innovations in library-related systems. Innovations in advanced user interfaces and metadata-enabled
retrieval environments and other areas have the potential to make online access more and more seamless and easy to use. Our
systems, though, are too old--or not standardized enough, or too familiar to change--to take advantage of these advances.
And creative ideas from exciting research seems not to make headway in real systems.
Libraries, if they indeed hold the kind of community monopoly described above, might do well to enhance their services by
leveraging community-owned information systems--which open source seems to promise.
Open Source and Libraries How could open source improve library services? First, open source systems, when licensed in the typical "general license"
manner, cost nothing (or next to nothing) to use--whether they have one or one thousand users. Although the costs of implementing
and supporting the systems on which software runs might not change, imagine removing the purchase price of a new search interface
(or ILL tool, or circulation module, etc.) from your budget for next year. Rather than spending thousands on systems, such
funds might be reallocated for training, hiring, or support needs, areas where libraries tend toward chronic shortfalls.
Second, open source product support is not locked in to a single vendor. The community of developers for a particular open
source product tends to be a powerful support structure for Linux and other products because of the pride in ownership described
above. Also, anyone can go into business to provide support for software for which the very source code is freely available.
Thus even if a library buys an open source system from one vendor, it might choose down the road to buy technical support
from another company--or to arrange for technical support from a third-party at the time of purchase. On top of this flexibility,
any library with technical staff capable of understanding source code might find that its own staff might provide better internal
support because the staff could have a better understanding of how the systems work.
Third, the entire library community might share the responsibility of solving information systems accessibility issues. Few
systems vendors make a profit by focusing their products on serving the needs of users who cannot operate in the windows/icons/menus/pointer
world. If developers building systems for the vision impaired and other user groups requiring alternative access environments
were to cooperate on creating a shared base of user interfaces, these shared solutions might be freely built into systems
around the world far more rapidly and successfully than ever before.
A Three-Step Process If you are still reading, you probably suspect something here might be a good idea. You might even want to help make ideas
discussed above happen. Where to begin?
Understand the Phenomenon Axiomatic business notions have shown weaknesses throughout the information age; the utility of the internet for knowledge
sharing demanded rethinking of what constitutes an information product. If nothing else, it is important for the international
community of librarians to understand the open source phenomenon as part of the technology-driven shift in our understanding
of the nature of information. Because the ethos and style of the open source initiative is so akin to the traditions of librarianship
we hold at the core of our professionalism, we should find within open source the appropriate points of entry for the similar
service and resource-sharing objectives we choose to achieve every day.
The seminal works on open source are mostly technical, but they provide an envigorating view of the current state of software
engineering. All are available on the internet, and they form a core of knowledge that might one day be fundamental to our
discipline. "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," by Eric Raymond [ER], is widely cited as the pivotal tome describing the technical
and social processes open source entails. "The Open-Source Revolution," by Tim O'Reilly [TOR], founder of O'Reilly and Associates,
Inc., a highly respected publisher of pragmatic computer-related titles, gives a broader view of the social phenomenon, in
particular relating open source software development to the scientific method. Finally, www.opensource.org is a central point
of focus for the Open Source Initiative. It is led in part by Mr. Raymond and appeals to both the technical and non-technical
sides of the community.
To foster communication regarding open source systems in libraries, we have created a web site, www.med.yale.edu/library/oss4lib, and a listserv, oss4lib@biomed.med.yale.edu. They are intended as forums for announcement, discussion, and sharing of broad
information; look for instructions on how to join the list along with a list of current open source projects for libraries
the oss4lib site.
Use Open Source Systems Where You Are Armed with understanding, we can find opportunities to leverage existing open source systems in our own institutions. The
Linux operating system [LINUX], Apache web server [APACHE], and MySQL database [MYSQL] form a powerful, free platform for
building online systems. Consider the value of these and other open source systems when making design and purchase decisions
at your institution; you might find tremendous savings and increased product performance at the same time.
Beyond merely using open source products, however, we must create them. Are you already working on any new applications at
your institution? Perhaps you've put a year or two into a homegrown search interface, or an online reference services tool,
or a data model and retrieval code for an image archive. Is there a good reason why you wouldn't want to share that work?
For those of you who realize that someone else might benefit from what you've done--and that you might benefit from the ability
to share in the work of others--consider thoroughly the implications of releasing your code under an open source license.
[FH] If the benefits outweigh the negatives, get started sanitizing and documenting your code as well as you can, and set
it free.
Another ideal opportunity at this stage is for library and information science researchers to open their projects up for the
entire community to review and develop as appropriate. Grant-funded systems builders might find an afterlife for their work
by releasing their source. Faculty might design courses around building a retrieval system or improving an existing open source
tool. Indeed this model is already widely used by computer science professors--at Yale, for instance, undergraduate students
might work on aspects of the Linux kernel in their Operating Systems course.
Grow the Phenomenon As the library community moves in this direction, there will be many roles for individuals in our profession to fill. Most
visible is application development; there is a major need for software engineering resources to be devoted to creating community-owned
library systems. This does not in any way marginalize those of us who are not programmers or database administrators. In the
open source community there exists a tremendous need for exactly the skills librarians have always used in making information
resources truly useful. In particular, systems testing, evaluation, and feedback to open source designers is welcome and even
sought after; documentation for open source systems is always needing improvement; instructional materials for open source
products are often lacking. These are all areas in which librarians excel. For the more technically minded among us, www.freshmeat.net provides constant updates and announcements of general open source projects replete with contact information for those wishing
to participate. For all of us, the oss4lib listserv and website will highlight additional library-specific opportunities as
they come around.
Playing a role in the larger open source community will strengthen our ability as professionals and service providers to understand
how best to shape our own systems. Additionally, it might make significant inroads in demonstrating how the ethics and practice
of librarianship is more vital to the movement of information than ever before. As the software industry shifts to appropriately
incorporate open source models, systems in other industries might even grow to utilize products the library community creates.
Conclusion An argument I have already heard against these ideas is based on experience: "We tried building our own OPAC in the eighties--it
was an impossible project and we gave it up after a few years because it just cost too much." In 1999, however, we know that
the internet has changed the landscape. Because it is so very easy to share ideas and software and code using the internet,
software developers have already found that the old way of doing things--particularly building monolithic homegrown systems
in our own institutions--makes no sense anymore. As the open source vision and culture continue to mature, librarians would
be remiss not to find our profession playing a major role in that culture. For all we have done so far, our online systems
are not good enough yet. We can do better.
References |
Documents
| Open Source Library Systems: Getting Started |
Dan Chudnov, moderator of the oss4lib listserv, wrote this article several years ago--but it is required reading for libraries considering the open source option.
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