BuddyPress: The WordPress Of Social Networks?

March 5, 2008 – 1:41 pm

Andy Peatling, who developed a WordPress MU-based social network and then released the code as BuddyPress has just joined Automattic, where they seem to have big plans for it. I’d been predicting something like this since Automattic acquired Gravatar:
It?s clear that the future is social. Connections are key. WordPress MU is a platform which has [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (2)



Chris ?Long Tail? Anderson On Open Source

January 10, 2008 – 10:01 am

Open source and the Long Tail: An interview with Chris Anderson
The shift of software from the desktop to the Web will really be the making of open-source software. The Long Tail side of software will almost certainly be Web-based because the Web lowers the barriers to adoption of software. There will always be some software [...]

By Casey | Posted in Blink | Comments (0)

People Make Scriblio Better

November 29, 2007 – 11:09 am

It’s way cool to see Lichen’s Scriblio installation instructions translated to Hungarian. Even cooler to have Sarah the tagging librarian take hard look at it and give us some criticism (and praise!). But I’m positively ecstatic to see Robin Hastings’ post on installing Scriblio (it’s not easy on Windows, apparently).
Part of it is pride [...]

By Casey | Posted in Dispatches, Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (2)

How Expensive Does Commercial Software Need To Get Before We Consider Open Source?

November 21, 2007 – 12:17 pm

Open source software of the free as in free beer and free as in free speech variety has matured to the point that there are now strong contenders in nearly every category, though that doesn’t make them easy choices. It’s often revealing when people criticize OSS as being free as in free kittens, which is [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy, Technology | Comments (1)

Copyleft: Defending Intellectual Property

September 25, 2007 – 6:53 am

Anybody who thinks Free Software is anti-copyright or disrespectful of intellectual property should take a look at Mark Jaquith’s post, What a GPL?d Movable Type means. Let’s be clear, Anil Dash takes issue with Jaquith’s interpretation, but the point is Jaquith’s offense at what appears to be Six Apart’s grabbiness for any code somebody might [...]

By Casey | Posted in Copyrights & Intellectual Property, Dispatches, Technology | Comments (1)



Mullenweg on WordPress and Open Source

September 24, 2007 – 5:49 pm

I wish I’d seen this from WordPress maven Matt Mullenweg before I finished My LTR on open source software for libraries. Mullenweg is brushing off some of the mystique and praise the media has been giving him, and giving an honest sense of what makes open source software work:
the real story is more exciting than [...]

By Casey | Posted in Politics & Controversy, Technology | Comments (0)

Building Libraries With Free Software

September 17, 2007 – 11:03 am

Sarah Houghton-Jan’s review of my LTR on open source software for libraries reminded me I wanted to blog this related piece I’d written for American Libraries.
Tim Spalding cocks his head a bit as he says it to emphasize the point: ?LibraryThing.com is social software.? However we categorize it, Spalding’s baby has become a darling to [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (2)

An Almost-Manifesto Masquerading as a Presentation…

June 23, 2007 – 10:43 am

Context: Below is the text of my virtual presentation to the LITA BIGWIG (it stands for blogs, wikis, interest group, and stuff) Social Software Showcase. The presentation is virtual, but the round table discussion is going on today, June 23rd, from 1:30-2:30 p.m. in the Renaissance Mayflower Cabinet Room. I won’t be there, though. My [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (2)

The Rules, 2007

June 20, 2007 – 12:01 pm

Contents:

Open Source
Built for Remixing
Well Behaved and Social

Web 2.0 has matured to the point where even those who endorse the moniker are beginning to cringe at its use. Still, it gave me pause the other day when Cliff (a sysop) began a sentence with ?Web 2.0 standards require….?
Web 2.0 is now coherent enough to have standards? [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (2)

Open Source Software and Libraries; LTR 43.3, Finally

June 7, 2007 – 9:01 am

The most selfish thing about submitting a manuscript late is asking ?When is it going to be out?? So I’ve been waiting quietly, rather than trouble Judi Lauber, who did an excellent job editing and managing the publication.
Ryan and Jessamyn each contributed a chapter, and I owe additional thank yous to the full chorus of [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (7)

Economics Of Open Source

April 5, 2007 – 7:33 am

Two fairly old papers on the economics of open source. The news recently has been that open source allows companies to bring in better, more innovative talent and saves marketing costs, but these papers are interesting nonetheless.
The Simple Economics of Open Source:
The nexus of open source development appears to have shifted to Europe over [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)

OSS Saves Marketing Costs, Protects Business

March 15, 2007 – 11:49 am

VA Linux founder Larry Augustin on OSS
In Augustin?s view open source development became a necessity in the 1990s when the cost of marketing a program came to exceed the cost of creating it. ?My favorite is Salesforce.com. In 1995 they spent under $10 million in R&D and over $100 million in sales and marketing. That [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (1)

Solaris + AMP, ASAP

June 7, 2006 – 9:02 pm

A Solaris sysadmin I’m not. But now that I’ve finally got the Sun T2000 server I begged for a while back, I’ve got to ramp it up right quick.
The first task is to get a, um, LAMP environment up and running (SAMP?…oh, Sun wants us to call it AMPS). A bit of Googling turned up [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (4)

You Mean Other Businesses Handle Acquisitions Too?

February 15, 2006 – 2:14 pm

Art Rhyno confused my by calling it ERP, but he just rocked his code4lib presentation and I realized he’s talking about the same thing that’s been itching me: libraries are not unique, but our software and standards are unnecessarily so.
In my introduction of WPopac I made the point that I didn’t want to replace the [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (2)

Kim’s CMS Shortlist

December 19, 2005 – 9:00 am

With 1,800 CMS vendors in the marketplace, we’re mining what we know or know-of as a way to shorten the list. Kim named the following four:

Joomla, a derivative of Mambo 
Collage appears to have good content reuse features 
OmniUpdate has a good list of higher ed clients 
Drupal: open source and turning heads

cms, content management system, joomla, collage, [...]

By Casey | Posted in Technology | Comments (3)