Microsoft And British Library Develop Open Source Research Tool February 9, 2010 By Andrew Donoghue
The British Library's new collaboration tool is based on Microsoft's Codeplex technology, but free software campaigners question the openness of the project The British Library and Microsoft have developed an open source, online collaboration tool for researchers. The Research Information Centre (RIC) Framework v1.0 released this week has been designed to help international researchers collaborate more effectively. Hosted via Microsoft's open source Codeplex project and based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Platform, the "virtual research environment" allows researchers to create and share content and also work on specific issues such as funding proposals, the organisations claim. "The RIC has amazing potential," said Richard Boulderstone, director of e-strategy and information systems at the British Library. "Together with Microsoft and a selection of researcher-focussed development partners, we are building on the RIC research lifecycle framework to create a unique environment for biomedical research collaboration in the 21st Century." The binaries and source code of RIC are being made available to encourage experimentation and use in the scientific community, according to the British Library. Tony Hey, corporate vice president, Microsoft External Research, said the RIC tool should help to promote collaboration among researchers. "The RIC will help researchers and academics simplify the process of information search, facilitate discovery, efficiently manage research-related materials and enable versioning and archiving," he said. Microsoft's links to the British Library go back several years and include the decision to host the UK launch of Windows Vista at the facility in London and a rare books digitisation project. But although the British Library appears to be content with the open source aspects of Microsoft's Codeplex project, free software advocates have questioned how open the approach really is. "We can see that CodePlex will encourage developers not to think about freedom," wrote Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman late last year. "It will subtly spread the idea that free software business is impossible without the support of a proprietary software company like Microsoft." Stallman (pictured), who developed the GNU project in 1984, is keen to establish a clear distinction between the term "open source" and "free software". He eschews the term open source claiming it originated from a split in the community-developed software movement. The community-developed model and operating system established by Stallman with GNU is seen as providing the basis for the Linux operating system and kernel developed by Linus Torvalds. "As GNU plus Linux caught on we saw a disagreement within the community of users and developers. Some of us wanted freedom while others appreciated the same software but only for reasons of practical convenience – they didn't think freedom was important – not even their own freedom," he said at an event in Budapest last year. FONTE: http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/microsoft-and-british-library-develop-open-source-research-tool-3306 _______________________________________________ Arquivos da Bib_virtual: http://listas.ibict.br/pipermail/bib_virtual/ Instruções para desiscrever-se por conta própria: http://listas.ibict.br/cgi-bin/mailman/options/bib_virtual Bib_virtual mailing list [email protected] http://listas.ibict.br/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bib_virtual
