SirsiDynix customers and prospects, as well as our library colleagues and peers, have asked us for our reaction to open source technology development as it grows and changes in the market. In response, I wrote a position paper that provides our perspective of open source technology as it exists today as an option for library automation. I am a librarian who has worked for libraries and several vendors, and I feel that the paper brings some very real challenges to light for any library considering open source solutions for their library automation.

The paper has been posted and exchanged in the past day, rumoured to be a secretive lobbying effort that SirsiDynix has been hiding. This is simply not true. There has been nothing secretive about the position paper, we have been offering and sharing it with many customers as we meet with them, and I am offering it to anyone interested at the link below.

via Stephen’s Lighthouse: It’s About a Respectful Discussion.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that we really can’t look at things as being so black and white. We can’t say open source=good, proprietary=bad. It’s not that simple. Stephen Abram is not a bad person because he wrote a crappy “position paper. OCLC isn’t necessarily evil. Open source vendors aren’t necessarily good. We shouldn’t assume that a vendor is out to take us to the cleaners and steal all our data, but neither should we assume that a vendor has our best interests at heart (no matter how cool they or their representatives are). Things are really, really gray, and require a much more critical eye than we sometimes have by default.

via Shades of gray | Information Wants To Be Free.