Open Source and Why It Matters to Libraries

Presenter: Daniel Chudnov, Yale University

Free software and open source software development changed the rules for building applications. Pioneers working on GNU/Linux, Apache, Perl, and the like have raised everyone's expectations of what software quality should be, giving the software industry a major competitive charge. It is an example we must follow in libraries. After all, if we are as fundamentally committed to resource sharing as we claim professionally, we can find tremendous opportunities awaiting us in this new paradigm. Librarians must understand the model because it is complementary to our own. We must take advantage of the resources and tools available as free software. We must also find roles to play in the open source world, both helping with broadly-scoped projects and building focused library applications according to these new standards.