I’ve been a contributor to many open source projects since I was in high school. I wrote a driver for a network card that’s still included in the Linux kernel, contributed code to big projects with lots of developers like Zotero and Mastodon, and to tiny projects like Loomio. I am even the primary maintainer of an open source tool called icmptx. I use a lot of open source software in my everyday life, and I enjoy contributing to the projects that I use to help make them better for others.
When we talk about free software, most people think about things like the Firefox web browser, which anyone can use on their computers and devices without having to pay money. There’s a lot of software out there that users don’t have to pay to use, and that’s great! But free as in beer is only one of the many freedoms that come with truly free software. While there are a variety of licenses used for software that can be considered “free”, the most well-known is the GNU Public License, which defines that a user has the freedom not just to run the software, but to make copies of it, distribute those copies to anyone, to study how the software works, and to modify and improve it. Adobe’s Creative Suite subscription for Photoshop and Lightroom costs $20/month, and the user doesn’t get to see how the Gaussian blur tool is implemented. But Krita is an open source program similar to Photoshop where that implementation is visible to anyone interested in looking, and Darktable is an open source program similar to Lightroom. Krita and Darktable are free in that they are without monetary cost, but they’re also free in that the source code is available. If Adobe decides to increase the cost of their subscription, or discontinue Photoshop and Lightroom, their users will be out of luck, but open source projects can be maintained by any developer interested in doing the work.
A recent class discussion brought up some of the pros and cons of different open source ILS programs, and the unrealized promise of next-generation cataloging. As more and more libraries shift towards ebscohost and ex libris tools, Hoopla and Libby, there are fewer resources being allocated to the free (as in freedom) software that so many libraries, especially special and personal libraries, rely on. Open source projects may not charge fees to users, but they still require human attention and expertise to maintain them and develop new features. For-profit companies are using their market monopoly on the content to build a market monopoly on the catalog. And I think this is an exceptionally dangerous trend. Like the ACRL says, “Scholarly and government information is a “public good” and must be available free of marketing bias, commercial motives, and cost to the individual user.” Just as people have a right to information found within these catalogs, they should have a comparable right to understand the implementation of the catalog software itself, to expose its biases, and to contribute in ways large and small to the realization of the promise of NGC. This would also have the benefit of letting users see exactly how they are being monitored and their data shared with third parties, improving transparency and privacy as well as security.
Libraries are bastions of information freedom. And that same freedom needs to apply to the software we use within our libraries. I hope that ALA and similar organizations will add source code disclosure and patron privacy protection to the list of freedoms that must be available to patrons, and that libraries will require vendors to adhere to these requirements when fully open source options are not yet available.