Chadwick Seagraves wrote: > This might be of interest to some of you. I know that oss4lib has been > around for a while, but I think there is room for more coverage. There's definitely room for more coverage! In case anybody cares (I don't see why it matters, but people often ask me, so...), I've long advocated that anybody who thinks they want to do something new and public to market the idea of free software in libraries should go ahead and go for it. oss4lib has long had a focus on exposing software projects that might not otherwise have much of a voice on their own in the library community. That was really important in 1999 when oss4lib.org started. Maybe it's not so important now. In any case, the web is a big place, and we don't all speak in code like we do here on this list. My only concern is that I see and hear a lot of people speaking poorly about free software and open source. I used to speak poorly about it, too, when I first started. So I'm as likely as ever to attempt to help people refine the message they're spreading (I had a piece to this effect in the recent Computers in Libraries magazine featuring open source in libraries, and see also my obnoxious booing of kgs during her c4lc '07 keynote for a less dignified version of the same argument). And I hope people starting new initiatives have at least half the skin thickness I had to develop early on, back when they thought us crazy anarchist hippies just wanted to crack into everybody else's systems and destroy the free market. If anything, that these folks apparently never took the time to search "open source in libraries" and review the first hit on major search engines makes me wonder if they know the marketplace very well or what they're going to have to say that's new or correct or even useful. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't wish them well. Let two flowers bloom, with an option on 998 more! -Dan