Gimlet: alternative or replacement?

[libstats]

Greetings all,

Our library currently uses LibStats for recording questions/answers at
our reference desk; we've had the product for several years and we've
been pleased with it. I heard rumors that it may be going away
(replaced by Gimlet) because Nate Vack took another position but when
I joined the LibStats Google Group last week, I didn't get that
impression. Rather, Gimblet would be an alternative to LibStats (that
libStats isn't going away): am I correct to assume that?

If I'm understanding the products correctly, LibStats is freeware that
we can install on a PHP server on campus (with our campus IT/library
systems people taking care of it) while Gimlet is shareware ($10.00
per month per library location) that is hosted by Sidecar
Publications, Inc.

Thank you in advance,
Tammy

[Dung Le]

i do not know about Gimlet, but we have used libstat quite successful, and I can tell that our libstat group is active. Erin is the one helped me many times before, she knows this app quite well as my judgement.

D.

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[Mark Mace]

I don't think anyone would argue that Nate knows the product in and out, and part of the reason he's moved on is for the commercial venture (Gimlet may very well be that venture).  There is still support as long as there are community members out there to give it.  Erin is the star, she's quite brilliant and knowledgeable of the libstats software.  When Nate was ready to move on, he requested someone to take over.  Since I was working in a library that was using libstats (and no one else seemed to be jumping up) I volunteered to "take over the reigns" so to speak.  I have since moved out of the library world but still have plans for supporting this software as much as possible.  The code is stable, although it could benefit from some newer libraries (which I had planned to do, but life keeps interrupting).  

My expertise lies in the world of linux, php and apache, so there is support there.  I don't know if there are many people running this on Windows based servers, but I'm sure someone somewhere is... although I wouldn't know why!  :D

So, welcome to the group, hope you find libstats useful!

--mark

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--mark

“Seek first to understand, then to be understood”

  -Stephen R. Covey

[Britain Woodman]

Since Libstats' code is open-source, anyone is welcome to use and enhance it -- which is what Nate did when he developed Gimlet, and which is what we're all doing here!

B.

On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 3:26 PM, libstats <tee...@yahoo.com> wrote:

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[Nate Vack]

On Aug 8, 2:26 pm, libstats <teec...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Our library currently uses LibStats for recording questions/answers at
> our reference desk; we've had the product for several years and we've
> been pleased with it. I heard rumors that it may be going away
> (replaced by Gimlet) because Nate Vack took another position but when
> I joined the LibStats Google Group last week, I didn't get that
> impression. Rather, Gimblet would be an alternative to LibStats (that
> libStats isn't going away): am I correct to assume that?

Well... it depends on what you mean by "going away." As others have
mentioned, libstats is open-source, so it'll be available forever (or
until some kind of Google-Armageddon). And people on this list have
provided excellent help to those who have needed it.

But: there hasn't been a really significant update to the code (added
features, etc) in a long time. I don't imagine that changing in the
foreseeable future. It takes quite a lot of time, and the market is
shockingly crowded for such being a niche. Right now, the financial
case for doing significant development on something like libstats is
hard to make; there's cheap, good commercial competition, and your
developers could be building something else instead.

So, I'd be surprised to see libstats updated much anytime soon. But
anyone's free to do so ;-)

> If I'm understanding the products correctly, LibStats is freeware that
> we can install on a PHP server on campus (with our campus IT/library
> systems people taking care of it) while Gimlet is shareware ($10.00
> per month per library location) that is hosted by Sidecar
> Publications, Inc.

Yup. Both libstats and Gimlet were made by me and my business partner,
Eric Larson. They're rather similar-looking beasts; the biggest
operational difference is that we host Gimlet for you. I think it's
nicer, too -- but then, I would ;-)

Cheers,
-Nate

[Nate Vack]

On Aug 8, 3:08 pm, Britain Woodman <brita...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Since Libstats' code is open-source, anyone is welcome to use and enhance it
> -- which is what Nate did when he developed Gimlet, and which is what we're
> all doing here!

Nope -- Gimlet is a complete, ground-up rewrite.

Partially, we did a rewrite because UW-Madison would possibly have
some kind of claim on the business if we started selling libstats
(they did pay us to create it, after all). Partly it's because
converting libstats from a single-tenant (one library system per
database) to a multi-tenant system would have been a lot of work, and
a pernicious source of security bugs. Alternately, trying to mass-
deploy databases and manage schema changes would be an operational
challenge.

Mostly, though, it's because I don't really love PHP, nor did I wind
up much liking the kind of proto-MVC system I created for libstats.
Rails is a nicer development environment.

Cheers,
-Nate