1. Open Source
The briefest of intros/
Open source ILS options
NELINET Public Library Symposium
December 5, 2008
Bob Molyneux

2. What I will be talking about today
• Why open source all of a sudden?
• What is open source?
How does it differ from what you are used to?
• Then ILS options

3. 1. Traditional vendors of library products
What happened on March 13, 2007?
2. Open source

4. Sources for library software
1. Traditional vendors of library products
2. Open source

5. Traditional ILS vendors
Terms:
“legacy”
“proprietary”
Two types:
Founders still around
Founders have sold out to VCs

6. Traditional Vendors (continued)
Characteristics:
• Compiled code (machine readable code)
• Intellectual property laws apply
• They own the code and you rent it.
Advantages
• “turn key”
• comprehensive solution to many problems
• documentation and support

7. 1. Traditional Vendors (continued)
Disadvantages
• Slow development cycle
• One size may not fit all
• Who owns your data?
• Restrictive licenses
• Forced migrations
• vendor lockin
• (largely) old code

8. New Vocabulary with the VCs
VC = Venture Capital firm
Cost Center
Recurring revenues
EBITDA = Earnings Before Interest, Taxes,
Depreciation, and Amortization

9. 2. Open source

10. When in the course
of library events...

11. What does “open source” mean?
“A set of principles and practices about how to write
software the most important of which is that the source code
is openly available....”[additionally] “...one should have the
right to use it.”
Wikipedia, “Open source”

12. What does “source code” mean?
“human readable”
What does “compiled code” mean?
machine readable

13. Advantages of the open source method
Easy customization for your own local situation
Fast development ‐ “release early, release often”
using open source bits
Cost—itʹs free.
can have about the same support as proprietary software

14. Disadvantages of open source
• Itʹs free but it may not be cheap
• Support—if you canʹt fix it, who can?
• FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt)
• Do you want to trust your enterpriseʹs key applications
to a bunch of dope‐smoking hippies with orange hair?

15. But a new wind blows
Firefox
Apache
Linux
Android (Googleʹs phone)

16. But a new wind blows (continued)
More specialized open source ILS initiatives:
VUFind
Apache Solr
Blacklight
Apache Solr
Ruby on Rails

17. ILS/CLS Open source dates:
• Koha – 2000
• Nelsonville 2002
• Evergreen – 2004
• PINES 2006

18. Some U.S. Public Library Stats
$ billions %
Top Quartile: 7.9 89
(Largest 25% by Total Expenditures)
Bottom Three Quartiles: 1.0 11
(Smallest 75% by Total Expenditures)
source: NCES/NCLIS FY2005

19. The two major open source ILSs began as small public library
initiatives.

20. But there other new winds blowing:
• MassCat
• WALDO
• Indiana Open Source ILS Initiative (Evergreen Indiana)
• Michigan Library Consortium (Michigan Evergreen)
• SITKA
• University of Prince Edward Island
• Innisfil PL, Innisfil, Ontario
• National Resources Canada

21. What happens if your ILS won't do something you need?
Proprietary
• Wait until the next version
Open source
• Do it yourself (or with others in the community)
• Either pay someone yourself or get others to contribute
• Cajole, persuade, or charm someone into doing it
==> Community

22. Evergreen
OSS opens the way for us to change libraries and their
interaction with our users
Evergreen offers one way and Equinox supports
Evergreen
Evergreen is open source software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL. Evergreen and the
Evergreen Logo are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of the Georgia Public Library
Service.

23. Evergreen design parameters
• Had to handle PINES
• 40+ PL systems, 250+ outlets
• 14+ million circs
• on a statewide resource‐sharing network
• and scale up from there

24. Architecture
Open Service Resource Format (OpenSRF)
Service oriented architecture
OSS bits
Linux (Debian, Red Hat)
PostgreSQL
Apache
perl, etc.

25. Architecture (continued)
Modern, modular, scalable, configurable
The only ILS software that can currently run large and
distributed resource sharing networks. It is the first
Consortial Library System (CLS).

26. What other futures are possible in an open source world?
Modular—not one size fits all
More open source choices, perhaps more specialized
Mix and match
• Why not open source and proprietary?
• Code sharing

27. Equinox Software, Inc. (What is your business model?)
Founded by the developers of Evergreen, its purposes are:
• To continue the development of Evergreen
• To support and host (ASP, SaaS) libraries moving to
Evergreen
• To foster the growth of the community that has
grown up around Evergreen

28. Eric S. Raymond: The Cathedral & the Bazaar
Thanks...
Bob Molyneux
bob@esilibrary.com
1‐877‐OPEN‐ILS