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Jon, 

Thanks for the info and the welcome!

Best regards

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jon Gorman
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2012 9:38 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Sharing code

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 11:34 AM, Whitworth, Cliff <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> NOOB to list and am appreciative of this discussion. My boss is encouraging me to share code and pointed me to code4lib. the majority of my code is recycled / repurposed from others so I've had reservations about sharing mainly because of what's taken from others. At the least, I'm mindful about leaving acknowledgements intact. Is there a good resource on how to start sharing code and ethical considerations?


Howdy and welcome Cliff!

In short, I think there's a push over the past few years to share more and more code, even when it's small.  There's a lot of individuals scattered in the library world who are not necessarily on local teams who end up doing the same work over and over again.  There's some tension with this as there's also projects that tend to get abandoned or just don't have as much support and community as they could.

I've been bad about releasing source myself.  I've got a barrier in our lawyers, who I really need to push to let me have more leeway for releasing stuff.


There's been a couple of articles over the years on the code4lib journal, see...

First, an argument on why to just put stuff out there by Dale Askey:
COLUMN: We Love Open Source Software. No, You Can't Have Our Code
http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/527

See Terry Reese's excellent article in the latest issue: Purposeful
Development: Being Ready When Your Project Moves From 'Hobby' to Mission Critical http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/6393

Michael Doran gave an excellent talk a few years back that really stuck in my head with the very issue I've been reluctant to put more effort into: lawyers and code:  The Intellectual Property Disclosure:
OpenSource in Academia
21:09 - 4 years ago
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3341633878207243364

There's a lot of other good articles in the journal and on people's various blog posts.  Github is all the rage these days, so at some point I'll need to figure out how to use it ;).

Again, welcome!

Jon Gorman