Re: forum of interest

[Thomas Krichel <T.Krichel@surrey.ac.uk>]

  Tom Hyry writes

> The fundamental notion that software and its development should
> be free and open is strikingly similar to how librarians feel about
> information.

  Do they? 

  What I have seen so far on the oss4lib is essentially software to
  work with information that is not in the public domain. IMHO, if 
  librarians think that information should be free, then they should
  support the creation of free documents and free metadata about
  documents. There are many ways in which this can be done

  * collecting free metadata about scientific documents on the
    internet (a poor man's ISI, initially) 

  * builiding publishing systems for free documents

  * supporting off journal peer review processes

  Clearly such projects take a lot of efforts, but with a few
  dedicated people one can get quite far. 


  Thomas Krichel                               mailto:T.Krichel@surrey.ac.uk
                                             http://gretel.econ.surrey.ac.uk
                                         RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel