Open Source Software for Libraries: from Greenstone to the Virtual Data Center and Beyond

The Growth of Open Source Software Open Source Software (OSS) has grown tremendously in scope and popularity over the last several years, and is now in widespread use. OSS has a long history of supporting technology infrastructure – the fundamental tasks of managing host names and addresses, sending information across the Internet, delivering web pages, and relaying electronic mail are all primarily based on OSS, and have been for many years. Some of the most well-known technology businesses, like Amazon and Yahoo, are based on OSS, and other technology companies like IBM have made heavy investments Last year, the OSS operating system Linux was used on one third of all servers (making it the second most popular server operating system)), and its use is expected to continue to grow rapidly (Broersma 2002).