Re: [LIS-Forum] Myths of Open Source Software

17 Mar 2009

      Dear friends,

To continue my view points on the use of open source software in India, I would like to clarify certain points again in response to some of you: 

1. I am not against using Open Source Software. But who should, what way, in what situation is the question. It is not always better option. We should not use technology for the sake of technology, it should be justifiable according to your requirement. We should have a policy to review/upgrade the technology, softwares and infrastrure every 3-5 years.

2. But through this forum, sometimes message is broadcasted  that only Open source softwares are having the best features, web based architecture, web 2.0, multilingual, etc and other commercial and free are not having. It is not like this . It is the technology available today that has made the softwares better and service oriented. Almost all the softwares avalable in India are good including commercial with all these features. You can decide based on your business objectives. Technolgy is driving the future , community has to use. 

3. In case of Indian scenario, there are four types of softwares being used: Commercial(doing well), In-house developed(not advisable), open source/free(yet to pick up), Long Project based(doing well). For new initiatives I would not suggest to go for in-house development. 

4. Let's see where are we placed in library automation readiness today. The way we used  the software ten years ago is different today. Because some of the most relevant requirement is : 
 Your library database should be published on Internet i.e all  modules should be web based and network centric. Members can see the the things from home or remote location. Library staff can make data entry from remote and diffrent locations in India.  If you are maintaining your database and dynamic website on LAN or single machine (unless mandatory), you are lagging behind others. In case of Open source you will have to work hard to get it published through your ISP. Simply publishing static web site and hosting is diffrent from hosting a dynamic website on some ISP.  Reason is undestanding others code is not so easy.
Once you publish your data on Internet , authentication and authorization should be security audited. In case of open source softwares you should take extra precautions.  
Majority of the libraries in India is maintaning their database on LAN or local single PC. It is not the proper automated system, you should switch over to latest technology. Here also let me clarify, all the popular softwares in India are having web base architecture, and not only Open Source. 
5. Also society runs not only on community based services. We should also trust vendors and commercial establishments. Economy and country prospers mostly on PPP model. Always thinking that they are making money will spoil the trust. They are part of the familly.
6. First of all going for any software, you should first we should see your organization's computing infrastructure alongwith our ISP for publishing on Internet, accordingly we should select the software either Open source or commercial. Platform may be Linux or Windows. LMS may anything open source or proprietary. But ceratinly I will not suggest to use the OSS or any software in isolation like LAN or within four walls of library . 
7. Ministry of External Affairs has stoped the use of Social Networking tools among their mission. Ministry of Home Affairs has made it mandatory to publish their database on secure ISP. No Governement web sites will be hosted on private ISPs. It is also sometimes creating problems to use private email providers like yahoo, gmail, rediffmail in Official communications. They must be used privately. 
Hope, I have tried to highlight the issues.
with regards
P K Upadhyay
NIC, Delhi

----- Original Message -----
From: Sukhdev Singh 
Date: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 12:58 am
Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] Regarding SOUL 2.0 V/s Open Source Software
To: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in
Cc: Upadhyay P K 
...
Thanks Friends for carrying out the debate further.
Regarding Total cost of ownership(TCO), on the very outset let me
quote "there is still debate over how to measure the total cost of
ownership of open source versus proprietary systems".
(http://sn.im/dx10z) .
I maintain my argument that any solution (Open, Free or Closed) will
require Servers, Network Infrastructure, Manpower to handle
installation, alternation and alignment of System Processes (Library
Process here) and training of the Staff and Users of the system.
It is obvious that different libraries would be have different
constraints. Some may be flushed with funds while others may be facing
cuts in their budgets specially in corporate sector (They anyway might
be having tough time in current difficult economic situation). Some
may be
having highly trained manpower while others might be having computer
departments at their disposal. For some the library operations 
may be
critical and time dependent (Large Universities Libraries ) for others
even manual system will still work (Small Departmental or School
Libraries). And some Libraries and Librarians may still survive and
flourish without even thinking of automation. Let us not loose our
focus just because there is such an heterogeneous environment in
India. But then, this is true for all spheres in India. 
Marutis  and
bullock carts run on the same road here.
We must try to understand one thing, Libraries have very long life
cycle. Libraries survive through generations. Atleast they 
survive for
the life of their parent organizations. However Software Life 
Cycle is
extremely short. A software version may hardly survive three years.
Version updates is a matter of norm. So, continued updates from the
software developer are a must.  So, while selecting 
software, this
issue has to be kept in mind. Now since, Libraries are meant to
survive over generations; the ideal software for libraries would be
that whose developer survives over generations. Not just survive but
keep on developing the software with new requirements and in
accordance to best technologies available in time.
Now let us apply this test on commercial developers. Commercial
developers work for business profitability. They will survive 
and keep
developing till they make profit in doing so. I remember, in late
eighties, there were three ‘revolutionary’ softwares – WordStar (a
word processing package), Lotus – 123 (a spreadsheet) and dBASE (a
database package). They were perhaps the most successful 
softwares of
their times and were taught in computer science courses. But 
where are
they now?  Where are their developers?   Well 
their developers could
not survive due reasons not linked to their wonderful products. Well,
CDS/ISIS (Winisis), which also become popular in those days among
Library and Information Community, is still available and does its
work for which it is meant (i.e. bibliographic databases). It
survived, because reasons for its existence were other than 
profit or
business.
Perhaps, you can argue that Microsoft will survive for generations.
Well, I also do not foreseeing any ‘Satyam’ with it. But, users of
Windows XP (and many users of its previous windows) will soon be
forced to migrate to newer versions (the notorious Vista). As after
few year s they will officially discontinue their support 
Windows XP
(infact they had given even this extension after lot of hue and cry
from user community). Well, it not that Microsoft is making 
loses with
Windows XP; No it is part of their business strategy. So, even from
financially sound developers, there is no grantee of continued
support.
These are some stray examples. Anyway, to cut the story short, 
let me
quickly come to the moral of the story – You cannot rely upon Vendor
or Business backed softwares for long term entities called Libraries.
So, what is the alternative available, fortunately “Community Backed”
softwares is the answer for long term continuity and continuous
updates. These are nothing else but Open Source Softwares which are
developed and maintained by ‘community spirit’. Since 
communities last
longer then individuals and businesses, the open source softwares
backed by strong communities last much longer. The community spirit
does wonders and cannot be explained in simple business models – but
it works! Well who owned Internet anyway? How Wikipedia came to a
level that it could be compared with Encyclopedia Britanica. How Linux
keeps itself going? And what is this Web 2.0? What the hell makes
sites like Facebook / Orkut (and many others) so popular. Well, there
is this ‘community spirit’ in every such wonder.
If youngsters are following this email; follow my advice – go 
for Open
Source Softwares. Learn them and invest your time and efforts in them.
Discuss them and help your peers in learning and using them. You may
have to work on commercial / closed softwares in your workplace as
merit is not the only criteria by which softwares are selected.
But still invest in future – and the future is open.
--Sukhdev Singh.
...
Dear professionals,
My view regarding open source solution vs proprietary are as 
follows.>
1. There are ceratin myths about open source softwares. It is 
a good topic
of discussion and academic study and reserch.  But the moment 
we try to
implement, problems arise out. Of course in any new 
implementation/change,> there are problems. People are the most 
important component in any solution
, open source or closed source.
2. Total cost of ownership(TCO) is high in case of open source 
solution. If
you consider the Software installation, server setup,
...
hosting, security, follow-up, customization the cost will be 
high.  In
relation to the total implementation, cost of software is 
negligible. We
should not be worry about the open or closed softwares, our 
motive should be
Proper Information Systems Solution. The management and parent 
organization> never stop if a good proposal with time bound 
implementation is put for
financial approval. Government of India has allocated Rs 23000 
crore for
eGovernance during 11th Plan . Many of the organizations are 
not able to
spend their ICT bugdet or sometime spend anyhow.
3. In India we are fighting for the softwares and codes 
developed by Western
Countries- both Open Source tools, OS, Systems Softwares and 
majority of the
open source softwares( for example Windows, Linux, .NET, JAVA, 
IIS, Apache,
etc). They are developing and launching these projects, and in 
developping> countries including India we are not able to decide 
which software are to be
used. Althogh we should appreciate the efforts of NEWGENLIB 
team from India
and many Open Technology Centres have been started.
4. Only people are talking in fashion of open source, freedom 
of owning ,
because it seems free but it's not if you talk of total 
solution. It has
become a fashion to talk  of RFID, SmartCard, Web 2.0, Social 
Networking,> MARC, UNICODE, Mobile OPAC, Digital Libraries, etc, 
even if there is no
basic infrastructure like latest hardware, networking 
infrastructure, web
hosting , data entry plan, etc.
5. Earlier also there were almost free software like CDS/ISIS 
from UNESCO,
DELPLUS from DELNET(with only Rs 7500 or so), SOUL for college 
university> from INFLIBNET (with Rs 50000),  but libraries did 
not utilize the
opportunity. Majority of libraries does not have capability to 
understand> simple codes of HTML and changing their logo in the 
software. Actually LIS
professionals are not supposed to be programmers. They should 
be information> systems manager.
6. Unless somebody takes responsibility of support or stamps
...
it  is not advisable to use the open source softwares . It may 
be security
problem.
7. I  have experience of regularly interacting with many big 
organizations> and libraries throughout India that are 
struggling in selecting the LMS
softwares since many years. They have not yet started Data 
Entry of books.
 If they could have used even CDS/ISIS or an MS ACCESS 
database for data
entry at least 60% work could have been over in terms of automation.
8  Some libraries I have seen, are not able to publish their OPAC on
Internet and maintaning database on local LAN machine. They 
have used many
open source softwares of LMS, Digital Library, Repository 
learnt in
different forums and training programmes. But when question 
comes of
migration, data conversion or enterprise integrating those softwares
solutions, they need huge money and running here and there.
9. There are around 5 lakh libraries in the country including 
schools,> hardly 10% of these may be automated  using Library 
Management Softwares. We
have to make them automated using open source or closed  at
On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 12:56 PM, Upadhyay P K  wrote:
training, AMC,
the product,
the earliest.
...
Here all the stakeholders are required to join and contribute. 
Only talking
of open or closed will not be sufficient.
10. My point in discussing these issues  is not to discard the 
open source
softwares, but more of providing the right kind Information 
Systems solution
in totality for Indian libraries. Of course there is open revolution
throghout world .
with regards
P K Upadhyay
NIC , Delhi
----- Original Message -----
From: Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay 
Date: Monday, March 16, 2009 10:18 am
Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] OpenSource Debate
To: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in
...
Dear all
A good logical and time befitting debate started at last. I'm
completely agreed with Mr. Singh and would like to add a few
point in that ....
1. Close source commercial LMSs are non-transparent in the use
and application of standards, whereas FLOSS based LMSs are very
clear in this direction (take the example of Koha, right from
the 1999 it is trying to follow and implement all the global
internationally agreed upon standards e.g. EDIFACT, NCIP, Z39.50
etc.);
2. Close source commercial LMSs are still not compliant with Web
2.0 tools, techniques and philosophy. FLOSS based LMSs are quite
accommodative in this regard, for example, Koha 3 is RSS
compliant (it produce RSS feed for every search query issued by
users), supports Tag submission by users to describe a resource,
users can post their comments on a particular resource available
in the library. In short it follows participative architecture
or user-at-the centre stage model. Unfortunately no other LMSs
is presently web 2.0-enableb;
3. Koha (2.x and 3.x) is web-centric in architecture;
4. Fully compatible with Unicode 5.1 and thereby ensures
storing, processing and retrieval of Indic script based resource
(see www.granthalaya.org for a live demo);
5. Koha 3 supports information mashup - in fact we are noe able
to snatch cover page images from Amazon without scanning pages
or writing a single line of code (see the site of Department of
LIS, University of Burdwan @
http://burdwan01.kwc.kohalibrary.com/ - search digital library
or LIS related terms).
Hope to see a brave open world
Dr. Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay
Department of Library and Information Science
University of Burdwan,
Burdwan, Rajbati - 713104, WB
---------------------------------------------------
...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sukhdev Singh" 
To: "SatishDpnd@Adroit" 
Cc: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in
Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] SOUL-NewGenLib-OpenSource Debate
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:16:33 +0530
Dear All,
I don't think we should shy away from any debate. But 
unfortunately>> > LIS Community in India seems to be relatively 
shy of healthy
debates.>
If I am given a chance to implement a Library Automation
System, I
would prefer a model in the following order:
1. Open Source Solution. For the freedom it provides in 
terms of
'owning' the systems for long term use. I won't mind taking 
a paid
support service.
2. Free Software. For it won't burden my budgets and won't
trouble me
with approvals of higher authorities.
3. Commercial Solution. I would be going for it if none is 
available>> > in Open Source domain. I will keep myself ready 
for migration
to an
Open Source Solution.
I still feel that efforts required for training and 
implementation>> > remains the same for all models of softwares.
I would still like to hear more on KOHA Vs NewGenLib. I am 
impressed>> > with the Delhi Public Library's ( 
http://dpl.gov.in/ )
implementation> of KOHA, though I have no idea of inside story
about it. I would like
to see NewGenLib's implementation available for public view.
Thanks
--Sukhdev Singh.
...
In response to LIS-Forum Digest, Vol 72, Issue 13 : Message
2 and earlier
discussions on the topic
Dear LIS professionals
The debate on NewGenLib v/s SOUL is simply not necessary
because I feel both
are meant for different segments of LIS market.  SOUL
was developed by
INFLIBNET years back under the aegis of UGC to support
academic Library
community which at that time was unable to invest in
...
initial College edition of SOUL was costing merely
Rs.15,000/- (until
recently) when proprietary standalone LMS was costing Rs.1
lac.  There are
more than 1600 SOUL installations in India.  Just think
of them !  What
should they do ?  Get free-upgrade of SOUL 2.0 (with
moderate costs of
installation) or go for NewGenLib/Koha which is free and
open source.  SOUL
2.0 has added many more facilities to its previous
version.  It's web-based,
many International Standards have been adopted and it is 
SIP2/NCIP>> > > compatible too.  Now think of those smaller libraries
which have only couple
of staff, what should they do ?  Use readily available
upgraded LMS or
switch over to free, open source NewGenLib or Koha - for
which neither they
have expertise nor time to devote.
All of us those who are adopting Open Source software know
very well that
it needs substantial staff-time-investment - may it be for
data migration,
customising each function to suit to one's needs or even
fixing small
problem of default currency.  Open Source LMS is only a
...
whether one can make a racing car out of it or not depends
upon availability
of the workshop facilities, latest tools and machinery,
research staff to
support and designing team to take care of its
dynamics.  Therefore I would
not blindly support Open Source just because it is almost
free compared to
proprietary LMS - but would strongly advocate use of SOUL
2.0 by those who
would like to concentrate more on user-services than
breaking their heads in
customising Open Source LMS.
SOUL 2.0 is a step towards upgrading efficiency of LIS
community as a whole
at very negligible input costs.  Those who feel the
SOUL 2.0 rates are high
should enquire for  rates for proprietary LMS in the
market, and also how
much would it cost to customise Open Source with facilities
which are
offered by SOUL 2.0.
I have yet not come across any fully operational Open Source
LMS in any of
the large Libraries in India.  Many open source
agencies claim that each and
every module/facility can be customised, e.g. Template
designs, RSS Feeds,
Blogs, Federated Search, scheduled auto e-mail generators,
Customised> > Reports, MIS stats, Online Reservation facility,
built-in SIP2/NCIP,
Video-streaming facility through web-OPAC, importing records
from web
catalogues, exporting records in variety of formats, remote
log-ins, Serials
Management etc., but when it comes to practical
implementation, it takes
months together to mould them to match needs of the 
organisation.>> > >
Therefore I will never ever criticise indigenous LMS like
SOUL.  It is/was
developed for specific cause/purpose and not for competing
with proprietary
LMS or to discourage use of Open Source LMS.  We all
should recommend it to
all those who are short of resources and do not have
time/expertise to
customise freely available open-source.
Would certainly welcome your views
Happy LMSing !
satish deshpande
formerly Head British Council Library Ahmedabad
Mentor, Nirma University Libraries; Adviser, KM&IC, National
Institute of
Design, Ahmedabad
M     :   098250 30460
email :  satish.dpnd@gmail.com
In response to LIS-Forum Digest, Vol 72, Issue 13 : 
Message 2
...
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 13:56:14 +0530 (IST)
From: "I.R.N.Goudar" 
Subject: [LIS-Forum] SOUL-INFLIBNET-NEWGENLIB
To: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in
Message-ID: 
>> > >> 
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Dear Professionals,
Herewith I have forwarded my response I sent through lis-
forum soon after
the announcement of NewGenLib as open source software. My
message answers
few questions raised by few LIS colleagues. Ther is no poin
in discussing
the merits and demerits of SOUL, GRANTHALAYA, Maitreyee,
Suchika, etc.
At this juncture of avilability of open source software,
what should be
our (librarians) stand? What responsible institutions like
INFLIBNET,> >> NISCAIR, DRTC, NIC, Keshavan Institute, etc
should do? Government has
spent lot of  money various agencies for the
development of good library
automation  system. Some of them were cooked half?
Discontinued further
developments? some of them never saw the light of the day?
Some of
them did not get good support after sale or implementation?
While I have
full confidence in the capability and vision of present
On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 7:51 PM, SatishDpnd@Adroit
 wrote:
proprietary LMS.  The
powerful engine, but
director of
...
...
INFLIBNET for developing SOUL as one of the good system, my
basic question
is, at this juncture is it necessary still put efforts 
and spend
money on such developments, when so many open source
softawre are
available? NEWGENLIB, apart from using open source
flatform, uses only
open standards. It has stood test ofthe time. At national
level we
should have customization, migration and support service
arrangements on any open system we adopt. MY LIS-FORUM
MESSGE SENT ON
11 JAN 2008, GIVES SOME SUGGESTIONS IN THIS MATTER (Copy
enclosed below)
Goudar
---------------------------------------------------------

...
...
--------------
...
...
...
Dr. I.R.N.
Goudar                         Tel: 91-80-25086081
Sci F & Head, Information Centre
for      91-80-25235315
Aerospace Science and
Technology          Fax: 91-80-25268072
National Aerospace
Laboratories           E-mail:goudar@css.nal.res.in
Airport Road, BANGALORE-560 017  India
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