Choosing Software: Open or Closed Source? Locally Hosted or Vendor Hosted

I just read a good article on Motionbuzz.com called Control vs. Responsibility: How to choose the best software for your business.  The author is addressing the issues around choosing open source or closed source software and hosting it yourself versus using the vendor for hosting. 

As he says below...the option that makes the most sense for you will depend on you or your organizations need for control and the level of responsibility you are equipped to take on.

Good News for Evergreen - now a member of Software Freedom Conservancy

Good news for all Evergreen Users!

The Software Freedom Conservancy welcomes the Evergreen project as its newest member. Evergreen joins twenty-six other Conservancy members, who receive the benefit of aggregated non-profit status available to all Conservancy member projects. Conservancy and the Evergreen community, including librarians, developers, and documenters, are excited to announce that Evergreen is now a member of the Software Freedom Conservancy.

Procurement and an Open Source ILS

There was some discussion on the Koha Mailing List recently about how to go about procuring an open source ILS...or at least, how to remain open to the possibility of moving to either an open source or proprietary ILS.  The thing about the traditional procurement process is that it makes if very awkward (at best) to unmanageable (at worst) for the open source service providers for two reasons:  

Library Collaboration - Open Source - Open Libraries Project

Helped establish and  managed the Open Source Open Libraries Consortium in cooperation with Peninsula Library System and Califa. The goal of the consortia was to "empower libraries and library consortia by encouraging participation and collaboration in software products generally, and encouraging them to consider an Open Source Library System such as Koha or Evergreen."

Over the course of the project we moved 9 library systems to Koha and helped three library systems begin evaluating Evergreen and Fulfillment. The project was concluded in October, 2013.

Open Source - Open Libraries Update

On January 27th, representatives from Arcadia and Los Gatos libraries participated in the Edgy Librarian online conference. The archive is, unfortunately, only available to participants who paid (and presumably already saw the program).  

For the program, we did an "Open Source - Open Libraries Update" in which I interviewed the two people from each library who have been most intimately involved in their library's migration to Koha.