[CODE4LIB] good and best open source software
What qualities and characteristics make for a good piece of open source software? And once that question is answered, then what pieces of library-related open source software can be considered best? I do not believe there is any single, most important characteristic of open source software that qualifies it to be denoted as best. Instead, a number of characteristics need to be considered. For example, a program might do one thing and do it well, but if it is bear to install then that counts against it. Similarly, some software might work wonders but it is built on a proprietary infrastructure such as a closed source compiler. Can that software really be considered open? For my own education and cogitation, I have begun to list questions to help me address what I think is the best library-related open source software. [1] Your comments would be greatly appreciated. I have listed the questions here in (more or less) personal priority order: * Does the software work as advertised? * To what degree is the software supported? * Is the documentation thorough? * What are the licence terms? * To what degree is the software easy to install? * To what degree is the software implemented using the standard LAMP stack? * Is the distribution in question an application/system or a library/module? * To what degree does the software satisfy some sort of real library need? What sorts of things have I left out? Is there anything here that can be measurable or is everything left to subjective judgement? Just as importantly, can we as a community answer these questions in light of distributions to come up with the best of class? 'More questions than answers. [1] There are elaborations on the questions in a blog posting. See: http://tinyurl.com/ybk2bef -- Eric Lease Morgan
Re: [CODE4LIB] good and best open source software
Quality of code in general: How well-designed is the code architecture, for maintenance and debugging? [This not only matters if you plan to do in-house development with it, but matters for predicting how likely the product is to stay 'alive' and continue to evolve with the times, instead of you just being stuck with exactly the version you first installed forever.] Developer Community: Is there a developer community around this software, with multiple people from multiple institutions contributing? Or is it just one founder maintaining it? [One founder maintaining it _can_ work fine, as long as that founder keeps maintaining it. MarcEdit is a great example. But the more of a community there is, again, the higher the reliability that the software will continue to evolve in the future, even if the founder bows out for some reason. ] A related topic: Do individual institutions do extensive local customization to core code, which does not end up merged back into the 'main' distribution? Again, this effects long-term sustainability of the software. I wrote a bit on judging one aspect of open source in a Library Journal article here: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6611591.html I also compiled some opinions from me, Bill Dueber, and others, in what 'good code' looks like in open source here: http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Category:Patterns I could also pick nits with some of your criteria, but, hey, if they're important to someone they're important to someone. Some of htem are less important to me (For instance: Is it deployed on LAMP I'd generalize to what are it's requirements and level of difficulty for deployment? We are quite capable of deploying non-PHP solutions, but that doesn't mean that all non-PHP solutions are equal for ease of deployment either!. ) Eric Lease Morgan wrote: What qualities and characteristics make for a good piece of open source software? And once that question is answered, then what pieces of library-related open source software can be considered best? I do not believe there is any single, most important characteristic of open source software that qualifies it to be denoted as best. Instead, a number of characteristics need to be considered. For example, a program might do one thing and do it well, but if it is bear to install then that counts against it. Similarly, some software might work wonders but it is built on a proprietary infrastructure such as a closed source compiler. Can that software really be considered open? For my own education and cogitation, I have begun to list questions to help me address what I think is the best library-related open source software. [1] Your comments would be greatly appreciated. I have listed the questions here in (more or less) personal priority order: * Does the software work as advertised? * To what degree is the software supported? * Is the documentation thorough? * What are the licence terms? * To what degree is the software easy to install? * To what degree is the software implemented using the standard LAMP stack? * Is the distribution in question an application/system or a library/module? * To what degree does the software satisfy some sort of real library need? What sorts of things have I left out? Is there anything here that can be measurable or is everything left to subjective judgement? Just as importantly, can we as a community answer these questions in light of distributions to come up with the best of class? 'More questions than answers. [1] There are elaborations on the questions in a blog posting. See: http://tinyurl.com/ybk2bef
Re: [CODE4LIB] good and best open source software
On Mon, 28 Dec 2009, Eric Lease Morgan wrote: For my own education and cogitation, I have begun to list questions to help me address what I think is the best library-related open source software. [1] Your comments would be greatly appreciated. I have listed the questions here in (more or less) personal priority order: * Does the software work as advertised? * To what degree is the software supported? * Is the documentation thorough? * What are the licence terms? * To what degree is the software easy to install? * To what degree is the software implemented using the standard LAMP stack? * Is the distribution in question an application/system or a library/module? * To what degree does the software satisfy some sort of real library need? What sorts of things have I left out? Is there anything here that can be measurable or is everything left to subjective judgement? Just as importantly, can we as a community answer these questions in light of distributions to come up with the best of class? + How often do I have to update it to keep ahead of security exploits? + Does it play well with other software? (eg, does it break under updated libraries and/or does the installer try to force me to update every library on my system to bleeding edge for no good reason?) (aspect #2 might fall under the 'easy to install' item) ... You could also end up with some outdated software that meets all of the requirements, but is based on older standards that might not be relevant today. -Joe
Re: [CODE4LIB] good and best open source software
I'm with Jonathan on the community health, one of the things I stress when teaching my open source classes is that the developer and user community is essential to the success and life of the product. Nicole C. Engard On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu wrote: Quality of code in general: How well-designed is the code architecture, for maintenance and debugging? [This not only matters if you plan to do in-house development with it, but matters for predicting how likely the product is to stay 'alive' and continue to evolve with the times, instead of you just being stuck with exactly the version you first installed forever.] Developer Community: Is there a developer community around this software, with multiple people from multiple institutions contributing? Or is it just one founder maintaining it? [One founder maintaining it _can_ work fine, as long as that founder keeps maintaining it. MarcEdit is a great example. But the more of a community there is, again, the higher the reliability that the software will continue to evolve in the future, even if the founder bows out for some reason. ] A related topic: Do individual institutions do extensive local customization to core code, which does not end up merged back into the 'main' distribution? Again, this effects long-term sustainability of the software. I wrote a bit on judging one aspect of open source in a Library Journal article here: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6611591.html I also compiled some opinions from me, Bill Dueber, and others, in what 'good code' looks like in open source here: http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Category:Patterns I could also pick nits with some of your criteria, but, hey, if they're important to someone they're important to someone. Some of htem are less important to me (For instance: Is it deployed on LAMP I'd generalize to what are it's requirements and level of difficulty for deployment? We are quite capable of deploying non-PHP solutions, but that doesn't mean that all non-PHP solutions are equal for ease of deployment either!. ) Eric Lease Morgan wrote: What qualities and characteristics make for a good piece of open source software? And once that question is answered, then what pieces of library-related open source software can be considered best? I do not believe there is any single, most important characteristic of open source software that qualifies it to be denoted as best. Instead, a number of characteristics need to be considered. For example, a program might do one thing and do it well, but if it is bear to install then that counts against it. Similarly, some software might work wonders but it is built on a proprietary infrastructure such as a closed source compiler. Can that software really be considered open? For my own education and cogitation, I have begun to list questions to help me address what I think is the best library-related open source software. [1] Your comments would be greatly appreciated. I have listed the questions here in (more or less) personal priority order: * Does the software work as advertised? * To what degree is the software supported? * Is the documentation thorough? * What are the licence terms? * To what degree is the software easy to install? * To what degree is the software implemented using the standard LAMP stack? * Is the distribution in question an application/system or a library/module? * To what degree does the software satisfy some sort of real library need? What sorts of things have I left out? Is there anything here that can be measurable or is everything left to subjective judgement? Just as importantly, can we as a community answer these questions in light of distributions to come up with the best of class? 'More questions than answers. [1] There are elaborations on the questions in a blog posting. See: http://tinyurl.com/ybk2bef
Re: [CODE4LIB] good and best open source software
I really like this topic, and I like how you're thinking about it. I tried to ask similar questions in an article I published in July: http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/w-e-b-s-i-t-e-find-out-what-it-means-to-me/ I think Jonathan and Nicole nailed it with community health, though this leads to an additional consideration that I think is more nuanced than the application/system vs library/module distinction. Scriblio and SOPAC are built on top of very healthy (from a developer community perspective) software that has been created with moderately technical end-users in mind. This also gets back to Jonathan's very good generalization of your point about LAMP: What are its requirements and level of difficulty for deployment? When the first few steps are as comparatively easy for non-developers as a Five Minute WordPress Install, I think that has to count for something. Brett Bonfield On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Nicole Engard neng...@gmail.com wrote: I'm with Jonathan on the community health, one of the things I stress when teaching my open source classes is that the developer and user community is essential to the success and life of the product. Nicole C. Engard On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu wrote: Quality of code in general: How well-designed is the code architecture, for maintenance and debugging? [This not only matters if you plan to do in-house development with it, but matters for predicting how likely the product is to stay 'alive' and continue to evolve with the times, instead of you just being stuck with exactly the version you first installed forever.] Developer Community: Is there a developer community around this software, with multiple people from multiple institutions contributing? Or is it just one founder maintaining it? [One founder maintaining it _can_ work fine, as long as that founder keeps maintaining it. MarcEdit is a great example. But the more of a community there is, again, the higher the reliability that the software will continue to evolve in the future, even if the founder bows out for some reason. ] A related topic: Do individual institutions do extensive local customization to core code, which does not end up merged back into the 'main' distribution? Again, this effects long-term sustainability of the software. I wrote a bit on judging one aspect of open source in a Library Journal article here: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6611591.html I also compiled some opinions from me, Bill Dueber, and others, in what 'good code' looks like in open source here: http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Category:Patterns I could also pick nits with some of your criteria, but, hey, if they're important to someone they're important to someone. Some of htem are less important to me (For instance: Is it deployed on LAMP I'd generalize to what are it's requirements and level of difficulty for deployment? We are quite capable of deploying non-PHP solutions, but that doesn't mean that all non-PHP solutions are equal for ease of deployment either!. ) Eric Lease Morgan wrote: What qualities and characteristics make for a good piece of open source software? And once that question is answered, then what pieces of library-related open source software can be considered best? I do not believe there is any single, most important characteristic of open source software that qualifies it to be denoted as best. Instead, a number of characteristics need to be considered. For example, a program might do one thing and do it well, but if it is bear to install then that counts against it. Similarly, some software might work wonders but it is built on a proprietary infrastructure such as a closed source compiler. Can that software really be considered open? For my own education and cogitation, I have begun to list questions to help me address what I think is the best library-related open source software. [1] Your comments would be greatly appreciated. I have listed the questions here in (more or less) personal priority order: * Does the software work as advertised? * To what degree is the software supported? * Is the documentation thorough? * What are the licence terms? * To what degree is the software easy to install? * To what degree is the software implemented using the standard LAMP stack? * Is the distribution in question an application/system or a library/module? * To what degree does the software satisfy some sort of real library need? What sorts of things have I left out? Is there anything here that can be measurable or is everything left to subjective judgement? Just as importantly, can we as a community answer these questions in light of distributions to come up with the best of class? 'More questions than answers. [1] There are elaborations on the questions in a blog posting. See: http://tinyurl.com/ybk2bef
Re: [CODE4LIB] good and best open source software
While I think the author draws to strong of a line between Open Source and Closed Source, there is a good book about evaluating Open source software by Bernard Golden called Succeeding with open source [1]. Edward [1] http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/55124574 Brett Bonfield wrote: I really like this topic, and I like how you're thinking about it. I tried to ask similar questions in an article I published in July: http://inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2009/w-e-b-s-i-t-e-find-out-what-it-means-to-me/ I think Jonathan and Nicole nailed it with community health, though this leads to an additional consideration that I think is more nuanced than the application/system vs library/module distinction. Scriblio and SOPAC are built on top of very healthy (from a developer community perspective) software that has been created with moderately technical end-users in mind. This also gets back to Jonathan's very good generalization of your point about LAMP: What are its requirements and level of difficulty for deployment? When the first few steps are as comparatively easy for non-developers as a Five Minute WordPress Install, I think that has to count for something. Brett Bonfield On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Nicole Engard neng...@gmail.com wrote: I'm with Jonathan on the community health, one of the things I stress when teaching my open source classes is that the developer and user community is essential to the success and life of the product. Nicole C. Engard On Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Jonathan Rochkind rochk...@jhu.edu wrote: Quality of code in general: How well-designed is the code architecture, for maintenance and debugging? [This not only matters if you plan to do in-house development with it, but matters for predicting how likely the product is to stay 'alive' and continue to evolve with the times, instead of you just being stuck with exactly the version you first installed forever.] Developer Community: Is there a developer community around this software, with multiple people from multiple institutions contributing? Or is it just one founder maintaining it? [One founder maintaining it _can_ work fine, as long as that founder keeps maintaining it. MarcEdit is a great example. But the more of a community there is, again, the higher the reliability that the software will continue to evolve in the future, even if the founder bows out for some reason. ] A related topic: Do individual institutions do extensive local customization to core code, which does not end up merged back into the 'main' distribution? Again, this effects long-term sustainability of the software. I wrote a bit on judging one aspect of open source in a Library Journal article here: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6611591.html I also compiled some opinions from me, Bill Dueber, and others, in what 'good code' looks like in open source here: http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Category:Patterns I could also pick nits with some of your criteria, but, hey, if they're important to someone they're important to someone. Some of htem are less important to me (For instance: Is it deployed on LAMP I'd generalize to what are it's requirements and level of difficulty for deployment? We are quite capable of deploying non-PHP solutions, but that doesn't mean that all non-PHP solutions are equal for ease of deployment either!. ) Eric Lease Morgan wrote: What qualities and characteristics make for a good piece of open source software? And once that question is answered, then what pieces of library-related open source software can be considered best? I do not believe there is any single, most important characteristic of open source software that qualifies it to be denoted as best. Instead, a number of characteristics need to be considered. For example, a program might do one thing and do it well, but if it is bear to install then that counts against it. Similarly, some software might work wonders but it is built on a proprietary infrastructure such as a closed source compiler. Can that software really be considered open? For my own education and cogitation, I have begun to list questions to help me address what I think is the best library-related open source software. [1] Your comments would be greatly appreciated. I have listed the questions here in (more or less) personal priority order: * Does the software work as advertised? * To what degree is the software supported? * Is the documentation thorough? * What are the licence terms? * To what degree is the software easy to install? * To what degree is the software implemented using the standard LAMP stack? * Is the distribution in question an application/system or a library/module? * To what degree does the software satisfy some sort of real library need? What sorts of things have I left out? Is there anything here that can be measurable or is everything left to subjective judgement? Just as importantly, can we as a community answer
[CODE4LIB] Library Systems Manager position at New School open
Apologies for cross posting. A library systems position was recently advertised within the New School Libraries in New York City, NY, USA. The position is a hybrid web developer/ILS librarian. For a full description of that position, please see http://careers.newschool.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=52106
