Losing Sleep

This is a little bit old…

I was browsing my RSS feeds today, getting caught up on all my back reading when I found this post from Sept. 29 at librarian.net. (Take a look at the powerpoint presentation, it gives a great rundown on what FLOSS is.) It’s great to see people talking about FLOSS. I’m constantly telling people about open source applications. (So far, for me, the big open source application winner has been Audacity.) The one criticism that I have about this post is that if you want people to take the open source leap, you should introduce it to them in small steps. It’s one thing to let libraries know about open source solutions for Windows, or Mac. It’s another thing to get them to drop their current OS and hop on the open source wagon completely (Linux). I think that might be a little bit too much of a leap of faith for some people.

This summer my work was selling old computers with a monitor very inexpensively. I was seriously considering purchasing one and setting it up with Ubuntu Linux for my wife so that she would have email and internet access during the day while I had the laptop. I didn’t because we really didn’t have the funds or the space, but I’m still keeping the option open. I’m willing to take the chance because I’m familiar with some open source projects and I understand some of the risks that are involved with using open source software. I’m not a coder but I do know my way around a command line… a little bit.

If we want to spread the open source message we really should be trying to “transition” people into it. We should be giving libraries open source solutions for their current OS (probably Windows, but could be Mac OS X) so that they can get their feet wet and feel the savings when they can go with a free solution rather than proprietary one.

Practically speaking, we can create an open source distribution CD for people and give it to them to try out. Since I’m a Mac user, I’ll use Mac as an example. I’ll download several open source programs for Mac: Audacity (sound editor), NeoOffice (Microsoft Office alternative for Mac, There is also OpenOffice, but this involves some technical stuff to install), Firefox (web browser), Adium (Instant Messaging), and VLC (video player). Burn it to a CD and then give it to somebody to try out on their computer.

One final note…
Oh the irony. The post mentions Howard County Library as switching completely to open source. If you dig around their website in their electronic resources section, you’ll find that digital and audio books are available through Overdrive and Net Library. These services can only be used on Windows machines using Windows Media Player because of the DRM that is included in the download. Any audio books downloaded using these services cannot be used at Howard County Library computers because they are running Linux. Isn’t that just a kick in the pants.