Session 2 – Free and open source software

Free and open source software = Benefits and hidden costs

Stephen Pryor Tech mngr St. Louis University

Free software – can do what you what – think free speech not free beer 

Open source software

Who uses it? Approximately 87% of US organizations – Linux

Why would you use free and open source software?

• No cost
• Security – peer review of code allows it to get better
• Reliability – more sets of eyes looking over code
• Affordability – free of charge, may be charge for installiation and maintenance

Licensing –

General public

Linux

MySQL

Apache

PHP

Firefox

Thunderbird

OpenOffice.org

Koha

Evergreen

VuFind – Web 2.0 OPAC

LibraryFind – Web 2.0 OPAC

Moodle

So what’s the catch?

• Staff time
• Learning curve
• Updates – often manual
• Bugs, erros, crashes,
• End of life, obsolescence, decay

 Wordpress

Mediawiki

Webcalendar

Rakim – chat

Sourceforge.net

Freshmeat.net

www.fsf.org

oss4lib.org

koha.org

vufind.org

libraryfind.org

Pryorsw@slue.edu

Pius1.slu.edu/oss

Questions

Asked about Drupal  – Mobius Consortium Office uses

camtasia