Thank you for your comments. I hope my post didn’t make many readers (do I even have many readers?) think I was implying that “Evergreen and Koha are somehow pigeonholed into the ‘legacy software’ category” – that was not my intention at all. I think they are offering what the users of the software wants, and from what I can tell both of them are quickly gaining added functionality that is coming directly from users of the software (whether they are developing it them selves or paying someone else to develop it).

At some point I wonder if OLE and URM are offering something most libraries don’t need, want, or desire. Sure, they sound great on paper, and I am sure *some* libraries (such as large academic research libraries) will benefit but will smaller public and college libraries find the new workflows and features useful? I don’t know and I don’t think we can know until the products are released.

There’s nothing precluding innovation in free and open source software, but the bulk of the directed work is definitely reactive, which in my opinion is a good thing.

We’re not trying to “play catch-up” (and indeed, in some areas we’re “ahead”, albeit in evolutionary rather than revolutionary ways), and we’re not trying to be all things to all people. We’re just trying to meet the evolving needs of our existing communities.

If these communities want topic maps instead of MARC records, or greater abstractions of and affordances for certain resources (print versus electronic versus people, etc.), then these things will come, and you know why? Because we’re working with software where anyone is free to scratch these itches, or take their flashes of inspiration and give them life.

In the case of Evergreen, we first developed a truly service oriented architecture (something that both OLE and URM harp on) because we really had no idea what folks would want to do in the long term, so we wanted to make things as flexible and as scalable as possible. We hope to get a lot of mileage out of this technology, whichever direction the community leads us (which I’m sure will include some of the same directions OLE is heading).

I hope OLE is successful, and I’m very glad they’re committed to being open source (or even community source). We’ll happily learn from their experiences, and either integrate with their tech or be inspired by it. Heck, I hope folks honestly investigate using OpenSRF and/or Evergreen as a base for OLE. But I’m not one of those folks who think there should be one true way, or that “duplicate” effort is wasted effort. The more the merrier.

With free and open source software, the beauty of that “We” I mentioned earlier is that it’s very flexible. As software, Evergreen and Koha are tools, but it’s the tool makers and tool users that you should look toward for cool things (the communities). Luckily, these folks are still improving their tools, and I hope that remains true for a long long time.

My apologies if this ramble is disjoint and incoherent. I just don’t want anyone to have the impression that Evergreen and Koha are somehow pigeonholed into the “legacy software” category, just because the majority of the folks using them still have to address today’s needs. It’s the promise of flexibility with development that is giving them hope for tomorrow. I think OLE can only but help inform that development.

– Jason