There’s No Need to Fear Open Source

The last time I wrote about open source (OS) software was in last September’s issue of Computers in Libraries, which was devoted to making the most of what you have and do-it-yourself solutions. After the column appeared, I received an e-mail from David Dor­man of Index Data, who believed that I had done OS products a disservice by discussing them with do-it-yourself projects. He felt it implied that products based on open source were unsupported and required technical expertise that not every librarian might have.