Ross Singer wrote:
On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 10:17 AM, Ethan Gruber <ewg4x...@gmail.com> wrote:
It seems to me that the major flaw of the software is that it isn't
cross-platform, which comes as no surprise. But I feel Microsoft didn't do
their market research. While the financial and business sectors are heavily
reliant on Microsoft servers, American universities, and by extension,
research libraries, are not.
Is this really true? My current University (including the Library) use a
number of Windows Servers. Would I prefer a different platform for our
Windows servers? Yes. However some are running applications that don't
run on other platforms and the others were implemented before I got here
and they are working so there is no reason to change them at this time.
While I know many libraries/universities use Novel, Solaris, Linux, etc.
I have serious doubts that a majority of American Universities don't use
Microsoft servers to some degree. As an example, I often see people on
the Voyager ILS listserv wanting to run there ILS on Windows because
that is what is supported by campus IT.
If they really wanted to make a "commitment to
support the academic community" as they say on the Zentity website, they
would have developed it for a platform that the academic community actually
uses.
This seems like sort of a snotty answer, honestly, and I find three
flaws with it:
1) Research and intellectual output is not exclusive to large,
research university which means repositories should not be exclusive
to ARL libraries
2) There are lots of academic Microsoft shops, esp. at the campus IT
(or departmental IT) level. It's not beyond reason to think that a
smaller university would prefer the repository be hosted by central IT
(or that the chemistry department or engineering school in a larger
university host their own repository).
3) E-Prints, for example, seems to be making an effort to commodotize
and democratize the repository space a bit by making it as simple as
possible to run an IR. MS is making this even simpler for places that
already have Windows servers (which is a lot).
Should we criticize Koha because (I believe) it doesn't have an
up-to-date Windows version? How about Evergreen? No one is forcing you
to use Zentity if you don't want to use Windows. If it doesn't fit in
your environment, don't use it, but that isn't a reason to criticize it.
I bet that more places can handle a Windows server rather then those
that can handle a Linux server. If only because a competent Linux Admin
can almost always manage a Windows server (maybe not MS applications
like Exchange, etc.) with little or no training, but this does not
necessarily work the other way around. Sure, the Linux Admin might moan
and groan about this (I know from experience), but they can do it.
There are plenty of reasons to criticize Microsoft, but I just don't
see how Zentity is one of them.
Agreed.
Edward
-Ross.
