Free Software, Open Standards and You NLS8 Michael Harris http://next-nexus.info

Free Software and open standards can: Save you money; Help you work better with colleagues; Allow you to move vendors easily; And have many other benefits.

What is Free Software? Think Freedom (liberty, thus libre software), not price (gratis). Gives you control, both of the code and your data. Allows you to fix problems, or get someone else to fix them.

Open Source vs Free Software Free Software label is older, from 1985 Open Source label from 1998 Practically the same for most purposes; philosophically different.

“It Itches” by M. L. Duong on Flickr. Creative Commons Attribution 2 “It Itches” by M.L.Duong on Flickr. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 (CC BY 2.0)

Why it matters to us The Free Software Movement and Modern Librarianship share values and principles. E.g. belief in the importance of equitable access to information.

Open Standards are: Publicly available for use without restriction; Do not need a fee to access or implement them. Can be freely adopted, implemented and extended by anyone. Almost essential for future access to your data.

Open standard examples Dublin Core Used for metadata PDF/A Used for documents that you do not want to change; great for digital preservation. OpenDocument (ODT etc.) Used for office documents, e.g. word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.

De facto standards E.g. MS Office or Adobe Photoshop Details often not available Mostly controlled by a single vendor Bad for consumers: decreases empowerment and choice

Image from : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OOXML-Excel-Issues.png

What to do at home Ensure that your tools can save in open formats. Actually save your data in open formats. When looking for new tools, check to see that that are Free Software and that they support open formats.

At work If involved in a software project, push to have Free Software considered. Push to have exporting open standards a requirement of the chosen product. If more people use open formats, then all benefit from the network effects.

Other work things For public PCs suggest having LibreOffice and other Free Software, instead of non-Free MS Office etc. Saves you money. Suggest having Free Software (e.g. multi-media professional tools) in your maker lab. In computer classes, suggest Free alternatives to expensive software.

Key takeaways If your software can export your data in an open standard, then it's probably OK. Free Software is not a cure-all or panacea, and you need to choose the best option for you. Free Software and open standards allow you to bypass vendors who might otherwise try to lock you into their eco-system. Free Software can be expensive; but so can non-Free Software.

Questions for discussion What might be some opportunities to promote free software or open standards in your Library? Why do you think so many people are resistant to Free Software? What are some examples of open formats that you have used?

Thanks NLS8 Michael Harris http://next-nexus.info/writing/nls8