After conference finishes I have to stay in Christchurch for an extra day. I, along with a number of others, am going to have training in administering a Kete through the auspices of the APN. This is quite exciting for us at Tararua as we have been looking forward to developing a Kete.
Some of you may wonder why we just didn’t do it ourselves, after all the Kete software is free, as part of the open software movement. Well, whilst the software is free, you still need support, and as, in the library, we don’t currently have the skills to support the implementation of the package and general maintenance; we would need to rely on our council IT section. I have talked to our IT department previously about this and also looking at Koha, and as these software packages don’t fit into the IT management plan then our in-house IT would not support further investigation.
In fact at the moment there is a bit of a bust-up occurring in the Koha community, as a company that took the basic package and then sold it through their services as a “support” licence. These services are for implement and further develop. This company, LibLime, is now refusing to release back into the community their developments. Apparently this is within the letter of licence agreement, if not the spirit. Somebody is trying to have their cake and eat it too.
So APN steps into the frame, helping us host and providing training and support for free. This is great, but when I go I will be asking questions and looking into the details very carefully, as I have concerns which originate from my conversations with the IT department.
What happens if funding for the APN is cancelled? For the free broadband pc service the issue is not so great, as we will be able to take administration in-house, and then will need to charge. For the Kete it is not simple. If, as I understand it, the Kete is hosted on a server in Christchurch, what will happen to our Kete? Especially if our IT department are unwilling to takeover the server and help provide support. Also who actually owns the domain name for the Kete? Would we have to buy it from the APN? And if they do retain ownership could we rely on them passing ownership to us?
I am becoming very aware that free does not necessarily mean free, and am very mindful of that old saying, there is no such thing as a free lunch! I wonder who is going to pay for mine?
For those curious on how to move a Kete site from one host to another, here are the steps:
http://kete.net.nz/documentation/topics/show/153-copying-a-kete-site-instance-from-one-location-to-another
That assumes that you can access the data to the original Kete site and that you are doing a full copy, rather than say pulling records into an existing site which I would term an “import”.
Kete does also have facilities for bulk imports, but doing a partial Kete to Kete import would probably require some developer interaction. It’s a feature that we have be talking about for awhile, but haven’t had a need for quite yet.
At Katipo, if a client wants to change to do hosting themselves or they want to move vendors we provide them with their data, files, and relevant configuration files and then they may use the steps linked to move forward. We believe strongly in the mantra “you own your data”. Of course the code itself is free.
In regards to the original point of your post, it should be noted that these issues are actually common to all web based solutions:
Can you get your data from your vendor or internal IT department?
Who controls your domain name?
Do you want to host the site internally or use a vendor?
What happens when you want change domains such as automatic redirects?
Cheers,
Walter
Thanks Walter.
I was thinking that if in a worst case scenario for the APN, that technically it would be possible to transfer the Kete. 🙂
It’s the other aspects that worry me.
Yes, web based solutions are nice but there are real issues. It’s like those universities that are moving to Google to provide shared workspace for students and students emails. It’s all hosted off site and heavan forbid if Google actually went under. 😦
Michael
Kete was partly developed to address the issues you mention about relying on third-party web service providers such as Flickr, YouTube, etc. The idea being that you take advantage of the way of delivering applications, but your organization can maintain appropriate stewardship of your data.
Speaking of which, one thing I’ve been preaching to people lately is “data portability” for any software package. Meaning that any software that you put your valuable data into should have at least one way to pull your data out of. That way when you need to move on you can.
Database backed web apps usually have an advantage along these lines since the data may “dumped” to SQL fairly easily and can then be used to move it to a new system. I think being clear with your software vendor about your rights to your data and in what form is crucial to making smart decisions about what software you use and from what vendor.
[…] There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch! « The Room of Infinite Diligence diligentroom.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/ – view page – cached Posted by dannevirkelibrarian under Digital World, Musings, Public Libraries, Web 2.0 applications | Tags: APN, Kete, Koha, Liblime, Lunch, Payment | Leave a Comment — From the page […]
More about Liblime and Koha at http://freerangelibrarian.com/2009/09/18/it-takes-a-village-koha-and-open-source-leadership/
Thanks Judy 🙂 I hadn’t read that one..
[…] second came from last weeks post There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch! I was quite exciting about this link as it comes from a library related podcast in the United […]