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Open source: Making connections by Sunny Pai

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Hawaii Library Association

The document provides an overview of open source software, its history and uses in libraries. It discusses evaluating open source solutions and factors to consider such as community support, total cost of ownership, and technical requirements. Resources for finding and evaluating open source software are also listed.

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Open source: Making connections Sunny Pai Digital Initiatives Librarian Kapiolani Community College 2008 Hawaii Library Association Conference October 24, 2008
Agenda Overview Uses in Libraries Evaluating open source solutions
Overview Short definition Open source: The source code is shared Improvements will be shared History Early 1950s : software was shared Business model: Sell hardware with bundled software 1960s : Sell software separately, protect source code 1969: Well known software project : Unix, started by AT&T, developed at Berkeley.
Concerns about commercialization Richard Stallman Resigned from MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab to form the Free Software Foundation Four freedoms: Freedom to run the program Freedom to study how it works Freedom to redistribute copies to help your neighbor Freedom to improve the program and share your improvements “ Freedom” does not refer to price.
Free Software Foundation GNU operating system (GNU’s not UNIX) GNU General Public License (GPL) “ Copyleft” : anyone contributing changes to software covered by GPL has property rights to the revised software as protected by GPL GPL has protected software projects such as WordPress (b2) and Netscape from the changing priorities of their original developers or corporate owners (Bisson, 2008)
Open source “ Open Source” Christine Peterson, Foresight Institute (O’Reilly, 2001) Netscape’s release of source code Effort to reframe image of “free” software to make the concept less inconceivable to software companies. Open Source Initiative ( http://www.opensource.org/ ) Some of the principles Free distribution Source code Derived works are distributed under the same terms as the original license License must not be specific to a product nor discriminate against a field of endeavour
Uses Content management systems (MS Sharepoint): Plone, Drupal, Joomla!, Sakai Digital Library: Greenstone, DSpace Operating systems (Windows): Red Hat Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris Office productivity (MS Office): OpenOffice Writer, AbiWord, OpenOffice Calc Databases (Oracle): MySQL, Postrgresql, Base Web services software (Windows server): Apache, Tomcat Languages: PHP, Perl, Python Indexing engines: Lucene GIS : Grass
Communities Features (Bisson, 2008) Need-driven consumers, user-developers, core developers (Forrest Cavalier) Other contributions: training, user support, documentation Critical mass: “Effective size” of a community or “Bazaar” (Eric Raymond) Evolvability: GPL protects rapid and multi-faceted evolution meeting changing needs Passion: Desire to solve a problem, make a contribution Types: University-based : Sakai, Greenstone University and corporate collaboration : DSpace “ At-large” community : Plone Corporate-based : Java
Incentives and Trends Incentives for developers : Solving a problem, fun, prestige, sense of contribution Developing a user/improver base Speeding up development and maintenance and growing a user community Recognition & great jobs Trend examples Sun Microsystems opened up most of its product line Sub-themes: Open source/Java-based/Higher education applications
Services useful to libraries Web services Web pages Databases Integrated Library Systems Desktop applications Office desktop applications Project management Browsers
http://www.techsource.ala.org/ltr/open-source-software-for-libraries.html http://maisonbisson.com/oss4lib/
Open source serving libraries Wordpress : Thomas Ford Memorial Library http://www.fordlibrary.org/obits/ Aaron Schmidt And Google Maps : http://www.walkingpaper.org/map/ Joomla! websites: http://www.joomlainlibrary.com/showcase.html Drupal websites: http://drupalib.interoperating.info/library_sites
Wordpress: Aaron Schmidt http://www.walkingpaper.org/ http://www.walkingpaper.org/map/
Joomla!: http://www.acfpl.org/
Moodle: http://moodle.sau17.org
Drupal: http://www.cpl.org/??&theme=andreas01
Drupal: http://fish4info.org Library Technology Journal May/June 2008 http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2008/02/fishing-for-results-in-interview-with-christopher-harris.html
Open source serving libraries DSpace document repository: http://www.dspace.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=596&Itemid=182 Plone websites: http://www.plone4lib.org/ Sakai learning management system: https://laulima.hawaii.edu Also, Moodle : http://moodle.sau17.org/ Koha ILS : http://liblime.com/demos Also Evergreen : http://open-ils.org/evergreen_libraries.php Meadville Public Library interview : http://maisonbisson.com/oss4lib/using-open-source/
Plone: http://uhpa.org/
Koha: http://www.dpl.gov.in/
Examining your need Define your goal : gap between existing system and ideal system Determining your requirements & comparison shop Scale of project Online vs. offline Security, privacy Metadata, harvesting? Text indexing Search features Access and preservation
Examine all your choices Commercial off-the-shelf (& modify), develop from scratch, contract development, vs. online “free” services, open source Feasibility Honest look at your resources Money Technical infrastructure : is your hardware, network adequate? Talent, current and potential Timeframe Cost analysis Organizational support Upper management Targeted users
Resources needed for large projects across solution types Commercial purchase (& modify) In-house development Contract development Online “free” services Cost of implementing Purchase cost Personnel hours to modify If web, cost of hosting. Personnel hours assigned to development Hardware, software costs Cost of development Basic services free Charges for enhanced features. No control over fee structure changes. Cost of maintenance Ongoing cost (annual fees) Modifications by contract or in-house staff Personnel hours assigned to maintain system Cost of maintenance and changes. Annual fees for enhanced features. Possible personnel skill requirements Systems analysis Programming System configuration & maintenance User training and marketing Proj mgt Systems analysis Programming System configuration & maintenance User training and marketing Contract negotiation Some systems analysis Proj mgt skills Syst maintenance User training and marketing Applications configuration User training and marketing Data storage Can be in-house or hosted elsewhere In-house Can be in-house or hosted elsewhere Stored elsewhere. Some programs have option to download data in an easily usable format.
Where open source might fit in Open source initial costs: Purchase: Free or minimal If you want to customize: In-house staff or contract services Community supports development Open source maintenance costs: In-house staff or contract services Community supports maintenance and upgrades In commercial and open source instances, can you take your data out and input it somewhere else? Commercial purchase (& modify) In-house development from scratch Contract development Online “free” services Cost of implementing Purchase cost Personnel hours to modify If web, cost of hosting. Personnel hours assigned to development Cost of development Basic services free Charges for enhanced features. No control over fee structure changes. Cost of maintenance Ongoing cost (annual fees) Modifications by contract or in-house staff Personnel hours assigned to maintain system Cost of maintenance and changes. Annual fees for enhanced features. Possible personnel skill requirements Systems analysis Programming System configuration & maintenance User training and marketing Proj mgt Systems analysis Programming System configuration & maintenance User training and marketing Contract negotiation Some systems analysis Proj mgt skills Syst maintenance User training and marketing Applications configuration User training and marketing Data storage Can be in-house or hosted elsewhere In-house Can be in-house or hosted elsewhere Stored elsewhere. Some programs have option to download data in an easily usable format.
Costs of open source Existing in-house skills or potential? Personnel time Searching for and developing solutions Personnel training Contributions to open source community Monetary donations, work Possibles: Contracted development Contracted support
Benefits of open source Minimal startup costs Tapping into many experts and expert users You can make modifications up to your level of technical ability You may be able to influence direction of enhancements and development Auditable Not restricted by vendor interests
If open source, how to evaluate Reviews and reports Strength of community Look at other implementations and features you like Download and try it out How much modification? Integration with other systems? Resources needed Skills (learning curve, training) Hardware, software, network
Resources that can help Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation http://www.hosef.org/ Idealware : http://www.idealware.org Aspiration: http://aspirationtech.org/ Social Source Commons website: http://socialsourcecommons.org/ ALA’s Library Technology Journal Business Readiness Rating: www.openbrr.org Free Software Directory: http://directory.fsf.org/
http://www.idealware.org/articles/joomla_drupal_plone.php
http://www.cmsmatrix.org/
 
Business Readiness Rating www.openbrr.org What is the licensing/legal situation of the software? Does it comply with standards? Are there referenceable adopters or users for it? Is a supporting or stable organization associated with the development efforts? What is its implementation language? Does it support internationalization and localization in your desired language? Are there third-party reviews of the software? Have books been published about the software? Is it being followed by industry analysts, such as Gartner or IDC?
Business Readiness Rating www.openbrr.org Assessment Category Description Functionality How well will the software meet the average user’s requirements? Usability How good is the User Interface? How easy is the software to install, configure, deploy, and maintain? Quality Quality of the design, the code, and the tests? How complete and error-free are they? Security How well does the software handle security issues? Performance How well does the software perform? # of users, remote access? Scalability How well does the software scale to a large environment?
Business Readiness Rating www.openbrr.org Assessment Category Description Architecture How modular, portable, flexible, extensible, open, and easy to integrate is it? Support How well is the software supported? Documentation Of what quality is any documentation for the software? Adoption How well is the component adopted by community, market, and industry? Community How active and lively is the community for the software? Professionalism What is the level of the professionalism of the development process and of the project organization as a whole?
Other considerations Quality of third party developers and integration of their products Complexity of software environment needed to run the product
Thank you for your attention! Any questions?? List of references & resources

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Open source: Making connections by Sunny Pai

  • 1. Open source: Making connections Sunny Pai Digital Initiatives Librarian Kapiolani Community College 2008 Hawaii Library Association Conference October 24, 2008
  • 2. Agenda Overview Uses in Libraries Evaluating open source solutions
  • 3. Overview Short definition Open source: The source code is shared Improvements will be shared History Early 1950s : software was shared Business model: Sell hardware with bundled software 1960s : Sell software separately, protect source code 1969: Well known software project : Unix, started by AT&T, developed at Berkeley.
  • 4. Concerns about commercialization Richard Stallman Resigned from MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab to form the Free Software Foundation Four freedoms: Freedom to run the program Freedom to study how it works Freedom to redistribute copies to help your neighbor Freedom to improve the program and share your improvements “ Freedom” does not refer to price.
  • 5. Free Software Foundation GNU operating system (GNU’s not UNIX) GNU General Public License (GPL) “ Copyleft” : anyone contributing changes to software covered by GPL has property rights to the revised software as protected by GPL GPL has protected software projects such as WordPress (b2) and Netscape from the changing priorities of their original developers or corporate owners (Bisson, 2008)
  • 6. Open source “ Open Source” Christine Peterson, Foresight Institute (O’Reilly, 2001) Netscape’s release of source code Effort to reframe image of “free” software to make the concept less inconceivable to software companies. Open Source Initiative ( http://www.opensource.org/ ) Some of the principles Free distribution Source code Derived works are distributed under the same terms as the original license License must not be specific to a product nor discriminate against a field of endeavour
  • 7. Uses Content management systems (MS Sharepoint): Plone, Drupal, Joomla!, Sakai Digital Library: Greenstone, DSpace Operating systems (Windows): Red Hat Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris Office productivity (MS Office): OpenOffice Writer, AbiWord, OpenOffice Calc Databases (Oracle): MySQL, Postrgresql, Base Web services software (Windows server): Apache, Tomcat Languages: PHP, Perl, Python Indexing engines: Lucene GIS : Grass
  • 8. Communities Features (Bisson, 2008) Need-driven consumers, user-developers, core developers (Forrest Cavalier) Other contributions: training, user support, documentation Critical mass: “Effective size” of a community or “Bazaar” (Eric Raymond) Evolvability: GPL protects rapid and multi-faceted evolution meeting changing needs Passion: Desire to solve a problem, make a contribution Types: University-based : Sakai, Greenstone University and corporate collaboration : DSpace “ At-large” community : Plone Corporate-based : Java
  • 9. Incentives and Trends Incentives for developers : Solving a problem, fun, prestige, sense of contribution Developing a user/improver base Speeding up development and maintenance and growing a user community Recognition & great jobs Trend examples Sun Microsystems opened up most of its product line Sub-themes: Open source/Java-based/Higher education applications
  • 10. Services useful to libraries Web services Web pages Databases Integrated Library Systems Desktop applications Office desktop applications Project management Browsers
  • 12. Open source serving libraries Wordpress : Thomas Ford Memorial Library http://www.fordlibrary.org/obits/ Aaron Schmidt And Google Maps : http://www.walkingpaper.org/map/ Joomla! websites: http://www.joomlainlibrary.com/showcase.html Drupal websites: http://drupalib.interoperating.info/library_sites
  • 13. Wordpress: Aaron Schmidt http://www.walkingpaper.org/ http://www.walkingpaper.org/map/
  • 17. Drupal: http://fish4info.org Library Technology Journal May/June 2008 http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2008/02/fishing-for-results-in-interview-with-christopher-harris.html
  • 18. Open source serving libraries DSpace document repository: http://www.dspace.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=596&Itemid=182 Plone websites: http://www.plone4lib.org/ Sakai learning management system: https://laulima.hawaii.edu Also, Moodle : http://moodle.sau17.org/ Koha ILS : http://liblime.com/demos Also Evergreen : http://open-ils.org/evergreen_libraries.php Meadville Public Library interview : http://maisonbisson.com/oss4lib/using-open-source/
  • 21. Examining your need Define your goal : gap between existing system and ideal system Determining your requirements & comparison shop Scale of project Online vs. offline Security, privacy Metadata, harvesting? Text indexing Search features Access and preservation
  • 22. Examine all your choices Commercial off-the-shelf (& modify), develop from scratch, contract development, vs. online “free” services, open source Feasibility Honest look at your resources Money Technical infrastructure : is your hardware, network adequate? Talent, current and potential Timeframe Cost analysis Organizational support Upper management Targeted users
  • 23. Resources needed for large projects across solution types Commercial purchase (& modify) In-house development Contract development Online “free” services Cost of implementing Purchase cost Personnel hours to modify If web, cost of hosting. Personnel hours assigned to development Hardware, software costs Cost of development Basic services free Charges for enhanced features. No control over fee structure changes. Cost of maintenance Ongoing cost (annual fees) Modifications by contract or in-house staff Personnel hours assigned to maintain system Cost of maintenance and changes. Annual fees for enhanced features. Possible personnel skill requirements Systems analysis Programming System configuration & maintenance User training and marketing Proj mgt Systems analysis Programming System configuration & maintenance User training and marketing Contract negotiation Some systems analysis Proj mgt skills Syst maintenance User training and marketing Applications configuration User training and marketing Data storage Can be in-house or hosted elsewhere In-house Can be in-house or hosted elsewhere Stored elsewhere. Some programs have option to download data in an easily usable format.
  • 24. Where open source might fit in Open source initial costs: Purchase: Free or minimal If you want to customize: In-house staff or contract services Community supports development Open source maintenance costs: In-house staff or contract services Community supports maintenance and upgrades In commercial and open source instances, can you take your data out and input it somewhere else? Commercial purchase (& modify) In-house development from scratch Contract development Online “free” services Cost of implementing Purchase cost Personnel hours to modify If web, cost of hosting. Personnel hours assigned to development Cost of development Basic services free Charges for enhanced features. No control over fee structure changes. Cost of maintenance Ongoing cost (annual fees) Modifications by contract or in-house staff Personnel hours assigned to maintain system Cost of maintenance and changes. Annual fees for enhanced features. Possible personnel skill requirements Systems analysis Programming System configuration & maintenance User training and marketing Proj mgt Systems analysis Programming System configuration & maintenance User training and marketing Contract negotiation Some systems analysis Proj mgt skills Syst maintenance User training and marketing Applications configuration User training and marketing Data storage Can be in-house or hosted elsewhere In-house Can be in-house or hosted elsewhere Stored elsewhere. Some programs have option to download data in an easily usable format.
  • 25. Costs of open source Existing in-house skills or potential? Personnel time Searching for and developing solutions Personnel training Contributions to open source community Monetary donations, work Possibles: Contracted development Contracted support
  • 26. Benefits of open source Minimal startup costs Tapping into many experts and expert users You can make modifications up to your level of technical ability You may be able to influence direction of enhancements and development Auditable Not restricted by vendor interests
  • 27. If open source, how to evaluate Reviews and reports Strength of community Look at other implementations and features you like Download and try it out How much modification? Integration with other systems? Resources needed Skills (learning curve, training) Hardware, software, network
  • 28. Resources that can help Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation http://www.hosef.org/ Idealware : http://www.idealware.org Aspiration: http://aspirationtech.org/ Social Source Commons website: http://socialsourcecommons.org/ ALA’s Library Technology Journal Business Readiness Rating: www.openbrr.org Free Software Directory: http://directory.fsf.org/
  • 31.  
  • 32. Business Readiness Rating www.openbrr.org What is the licensing/legal situation of the software? Does it comply with standards? Are there referenceable adopters or users for it? Is a supporting or stable organization associated with the development efforts? What is its implementation language? Does it support internationalization and localization in your desired language? Are there third-party reviews of the software? Have books been published about the software? Is it being followed by industry analysts, such as Gartner or IDC?
  • 33. Business Readiness Rating www.openbrr.org Assessment Category Description Functionality How well will the software meet the average user’s requirements? Usability How good is the User Interface? How easy is the software to install, configure, deploy, and maintain? Quality Quality of the design, the code, and the tests? How complete and error-free are they? Security How well does the software handle security issues? Performance How well does the software perform? # of users, remote access? Scalability How well does the software scale to a large environment?
  • 34. Business Readiness Rating www.openbrr.org Assessment Category Description Architecture How modular, portable, flexible, extensible, open, and easy to integrate is it? Support How well is the software supported? Documentation Of what quality is any documentation for the software? Adoption How well is the component adopted by community, market, and industry? Community How active and lively is the community for the software? Professionalism What is the level of the professionalism of the development process and of the project organization as a whole?
  • 35. Other considerations Quality of third party developers and integration of their products Complexity of software environment needed to run the product
  • 36. Thank you for your attention! Any questions?? List of references & resources