Est. 1984
FOSS
Oh, pen office!
Jan 31st
The Edwardsville Public Library has begone the wondrous transition to Open Office. It’s now installed on every staff & patron computer in the building, and come April 1 I’ll be uninstalling Microsoft Office. This is the first of what I hope will be many steps away from proprietary systems (you’re next Windoze!)
Installation was a breeze- it’s amazing how simple it is to install software that has no licensing restrictions. There were a few grumbles from the staff about having to learn new software, despite my claims that it was scarcely a change at all from the user’s perspective. Since the unrolling, there have only been minor problems (e.g. template issues, naming confusion). What seems to be the greatest hurdle is Microsoft Word’s reputation. Everyone knows it (and it’s little icon), which may lead to future trouble with patrons.
Do we tell them we have Microsoft Office, when we really have a 100% compatible solution they’ve never heard of (and couldn’t differentiate from M$ Word)? Or do we have to be completely honest and say “No, we don’t have M$ Office, but we do have Open Office…….Yes, it’s the same…… No, the terrorists don’t win if you use open source software……..If you’ll just stop shouting………………….”
Once they realize it’s free and therefore:
a. Something they can download and install (I may even put a Installation disc into Circulation)
b. Something that doesn’t cost any of their precious tax dollars
I think it will be accepted. Maybe the computer classes would be a good launching point….
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Open Sores
Nov 21st
Alot of clawing and gnashing here today. I was thrilled to see that Userful had released their Pre-Book software as open source. I gleefully downloaded the server image from Sourceforge, dreaming of the that glorious day when I wouldn’t have to deal with Envisionware’s PC-Reservation anymore.
I burned the iso and found a box to use as a test server. The system booted up and it was …Fedora! Not really my favorite brand of linux, but I can’t win em’ all. The install required no input at all, and took just a few minutes. That’s where the good part ended. At first boot, the Postgresql service wouldn’t start. Without a database, the Pre-book web installation also wouldn’t start (something about incorrect data format for this version of so-and-so). My instinct told me to update. For the uninitiated, using Redhat/Fedora’s updater is akin to passing a kidney stone, and only slightly less time consuming.
An hour and a half later, we were all updated and gave it another go.
Same message.
After extensive googling, I gave up and reinstalled. It turns out that Userful was aware of the problem and had a troubleshooting entry for it- all you had to do was edit a single file that contained a single line, telling the software to use the new version of Postgresql. How simple would this be for Userful to correct? Aaaaaaaargh.
All this I can endure. But then my tin-foil-hat alter-ego stepped out from the shadows and said “What if Userful is intentionally making this difficult, so people will just buy Pre-Book from them?” This notion doesn’t sit very well with me. In my humble opinion, it’s much better to be closed-source and admit it, rather than be a company peddling itself as open-source. Granted this is not the first time a software company has taken a half-assed approach to releasing its code, but when the product relies entirely on FOSS, people should know better.
In the end, I did successfully install Pre-Book. After a little bit of tweaking, I tried logging in with a newly-created user and bam: a database error stops me cold. Here we go again…
