2. Philosophy of “Free” or Open Source Software
“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To
understand the concept, you should think of “free” as
in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”
—Richard Stallman, Founder of the Free Software Movement
3. Philosophy of “Free” or Open Source Software
The Open Source Licensing Model (GNU.org)
defines four essential freedoms:
• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose
(freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and
change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1).
Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your
neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified
versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can
give the whole community a chance to benefit from your
changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for
this.
4. Values of Open Source
- Freedom
- Transparency
- Extensibility
- Collaboration
- Innovation
Strength in numbers!
5. Successes of Open Source
Operating Systems: Linux, Symbian, GNU Project,
NetBSD.
Servers: Apache, Tomcat, MediaWiki, Drupal,
WordPress, Eclipse, Moodle, Joomla
Programming Languages: Java, JavaScript, PHP,
Python, Ruby
Client software: Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird,
OpenOffice, Songbird, Audacity, 7-Zip
Digital Content: Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Project
Gutenberg
6. FOSS
FOSS is increasingly the go-to standard for operating
systems to user applications, for individuals to large
enterprises. It helps reduce costs, avoid lock-in,
increase productivity, enhance security, and improve
standards compliance.
7. TODAYS FOSS IN ORGANIZATIONS?
Free Open Source Software can be supported by anyone
that wishes to do so. It is generally developed by meritocratic
teams of developers, associations of companies, businesses
that provide support and services, non-profit foundations, and
research and academic institutions.
Key organizations in the Free Open Source Software
include
FLOSS Manuals -- FLOSS Manuals is a community creating
free manuals for free and open source software.
FOSS Learning Centre -- An international non-profit
organization serving as an information and training hub for
conferences, webcasts, online videos, and workshops
providing information about with free open source software.
8. Contd..
GOSLING - "Getting Open Source Logic INto Governments", is
an informal learning and knowledge-sharing community.
Open Source for America -- A cross-section of technology
industry leaders, associations, non-governmental organizations,
communities, and academic/research institutions.
Open Source Initiative -- The original popularizer of the term
"open source", and the recognized certification authority for
whether or not a given software license is Free Open Source
Software.
Open Source Software Institute -- Non-profit organization of
corporate, government and academic representatives to
promote open-source solutions.
9. Primary Sources….
Apache Software Foundation- Offers an array of Free Open
Source Software web development services, including Java
applications servers, frameworks, and application development
tools.
GitHub- Provides access through the GIT configuration
management system.
Mozilla.org – Best known for the Firefox web browser.
Savannah - Central point for development, distribution, and
maintenance of GNU software.
SourceForge.net – Supports tens of thousands of open source
projects, including community organization and management tools
to help teams develop their software.
11. Why NASA uses Open Source?
•In order to save the data from distant spacecraft, satellites and
other scientific endeavors.
•NASA is leveraging open source tech (including Ubuntu Linux)
and regular enterprise networking components to meet their
mission.
•NASA is simply using Ubuntu as a freely available operating
system.
NASA efforts.
• oss4lib -- Open source for libraries.
• Tigris.org -- Open Source software engineering tools.
• freemedsw.apfelkraut.org -- Compilation of Open Source
software for health care
• VALO-CD -- Open source CD distribution for Windows.
12. Databases used by FOSS
• Drizzle - MySQL fork.
• HyperTable - Very high scalability Hadoop compatible
distributed database.
• MariaDB - MySQL replacement.
• Membrane SOA Registry - A registry for SOA services.
• MongoDB - Scalable NoSQL database.
• MySQL - Popular relational database
• Perst - Object oriented embedded database.
• RavenDB - Document database.
• SQLite - Light-weight relational database.
13. Distributed Computing
Distributed sever management tools for very high scalability.
• Hadoop - Processing of very large data sets across many
computers.
•Cassandra - Data replication and fault tolerance.
•Mesos - Application resource management across clusters
• Spark - High scalability data analytics
• Storm - Distributed very large data set processing
14. What is Urbi?
Urbi is an open-source software platform to control robots or complex
systems. It includes a C++ component library called UObject that
comes with a robot standard API to describe motors, sensors and
algorithms.
15. The advantages of FOSS products
•higher stability
•high level of security
•none or low licensing fees
•possibility to modify source code
•ample access to IT specialists
•independence from major software vendors
Notes de l'éditeur
For the past several years, Lehigh Libraries has been on a pragmatic path of adopting feature-laden OSS into our academic library environment. This morning we will share the story of how we adopted three OSS for specific needs: discovery (VuFind), connectivity (eXtensible Catalog (XC) NCIP toolkit), and web presence (Drupal). What were our considerations and experiences? And what are our conclusions about how OSS fit into our enterprise?
First, a few words about the philosophy of open source. Richard Stallman (a pioneer of the Free Software Movement) famously said that "free software" is a matter of liberty not price . "Free" means free as in free speech or free kittens .. NOT FREE BEER! As with "free kittens", software ownership requires responsibilities and costs ... What some term TCO - total cost of ownership...
The GNU Project blazed the trail of open source software during the 1980's. The have defined "Essential Freedoms of Free Software" 1) Use the program for any purpose 2) Change the program to make it do what you wish 3) Redistribute copies of the program 4) distribute copies of your modified version (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) gnu - recursive acronym: GNUs not Unix
The Open Source Movement and libraries share several common values – especially a belief in free and open access to ideas and information. Strengths of non-proprietary model: transparency of the code - you can modify or extend the code to fit your local circumstances. Also, Community and Collaboration : You can share your modifications with others. Best of all, other like similar sites can share their developments and improvements with you! Strength in numbers!
Successful open source projects make up many of todays most widely used technologies
The first solution we would like to talk about is...Vufind....which is an open source discovery tool for libraries Vufind is not a new project...it has been almost four years since its first release. We - meaning all of us & our patrons -have come to expect an ease of use - a level of sophistication - 'online' VuFind allows us to provide that experience to our patrons. At this time...I would like to demonstrate the features of VuFind THIS IS OUR TEST SITE! We are currently testing VuFind internally with some of our library staff. We plan to go live in the Fall. DEMO HERE
In order to assess the viability of OSS for libraries, we need to be aware of "hidden costs". We will discuss these case by case, but generally the "costs" fall into these categories: Infrastructure - need to build and maintain your owns servers and testing environments. Development - OSS often require high learning curve, local development time and expertise. Support - When you face a challenge or service outage, support normally does not come from a vendor but from the OSS community. Can't just pick up the phone and call the vendor ..
We would like to tell you about the implementation of three open source projects at Lehigh... over the past couple of years we've addressed the need for...discovery, connectivity and web presence... When we have a need for a software solution we will typically consider open source when analyzing our options. our open source software choices have been selective and made with caution... however, we've found the best success with open source projects that.... -are proven -have had multiple releases -have roadmaps -and strong/responsive development communities
VuFind has an active & responsive user community In addition to the general VuFind developers...there is a community of developers that are SirsiDynix customers...this group has a list server and I will include the url for this list serve in the speaker notes: https://lists.lehigh.edu/mailman/listinfo/vufind-unicorn-l Both the code and the management of the VuFind project have reached a level of maturity. The project has been through several iterations...the most recent release was this past March (v1.1) The project team publishes a roadmap for future iterations...as well as a prioritization of ehancements/fixes. (Our version 1.0.1)
Our implementation of VuFind involved both simple configuration settings as well as custom coding - to enable the communication with SirsiDynix Symphony. Much of what we wanted to do---bending VuFind to work with our catalog/ our MARC records we were able to do with configuration settings within the application. It's written to be very easily configured...and most times...when I found I needed to do something...to bend VuFind...I found that there was a configuration setting - not custom coding that was required- to allow me to do so. It gave me a sense...that someone had been 'here' before and the capability to make these things configurable has been built in....it's maturity really shines through.... I'll give you some examples....
The custom coding we wrote, was primarily for the "My Account" functionality...like Place Hold or Renew Item. This diagram shows how the two systems integrate and - from a coding level - where the customizations were needed. The left side represents the VuFind code The right side represents the Sirsi API and Catalog. The Yellow boxes represent the custom code needed to connect VuFind to the Catalog. All of the custom PHP (and Perl) code will be open sourced.
The next OSS we will address is the Extensible Catalog NCIP Toolkit. The Extensible Catalog (XC) is an open source, next gen software for libraries comprising four components: UI, Metadata Management, and ILS Connectivity: NCIP and OAI. The Mellon Foundation has been a primary sponsor .. Lehigh's interest in OSS NCIP was precipitated by a recent change in our consortial sharing agreement. Our New ILL vendor for our Pennsylvania Library Consortium (PALCI) required all participant institutions to make their ILS available via NCIP services. The XC NCIP toolkit does this with ILS authentication requests, circ lookups and requests ..
The next OSS we will address is the Extensible Catalog NCIP Toolkit. The Extensible Catalog (XC) is an open source, next gen software for libraries comprising four components: UI, Metadata Management, and ILS Connectivity: NCIP and OAI. The Mellon Foundation has been a primary sponsor .. Lehigh's interest in OSS NCIP was precipitated by a recent change in our consortial sharing agreement. Our New ILL vendor for our Pennsylvania Library Consortium (PALCI) required all participant institutions to make their ILS available via NCIP services. The XC NCIP toolkit does this with ILS authentication requests, circ lookups and requests ..
