I'd regard the lawsuit as an indicator for Zotero's quality. Reuters Thomson obviously is scared as hell that their business model of selling very expensive proprietary software is in severe danger.
I'd suggest that all of us inform our libraries about the advantages of Zotero and ask them to end contracts with Thomson (if they have any) and support the free, open-source alternative. If Thomson loses the lawsuit -- and I'm sure they will -- it will at least have created lots of free publicity for Zotero...
This is an empty lawsuit, and it's probably not in the long-term interests of any edu user or institution, much less Zotero, to let Thomson get away with this. I'd love to see the Software Freedom Law Center pick this up, much like they did the suit by Blackboard.
Hopefully sometime soon the Zotero team talks publicly about how they plan to proceed with this.
This kind of behaviour should definitely be highlighted in the european countries where protection for software IP is considered much more circumspectly. You will gain a lot of supporters in the UK, Germany and France.
what I'd really like to see is many of the Universities who have endorsed Zotero and have simultaneous campus licences for Endnote (and yes, I am thinking of my own school among others) to put some pressure on Reuters/Thomson. Not too confident this is going to happen, but it's definitely worth a try.
Otherwise thumps up to Zotero and if this actually does become relevant I'll join those volunteering donations.
This is going to get lots of sympathetic publicity for Zotero (some some recent discussion here). I can see universities also getting flooded with requests to cease support for Endnote. Unfortunately the corporate climate in universities here (Australia) is rather anti open-source for various reasons (huge government support for Microsoft products, clueless uni IT departments, and an extreme top-down corporate management model in our universities leading to the expected consequences), but I've already seen requests on my university library website for withdrawal of support for Thomson Research products.
I agree with Hobbesvsboyle. I only heard about Zotero *through* the writing about the lawsuit... What a fabulous tool you have made. I want to tell you how much I appreciate and admire your work. As I work in in the field of research education, I will be recommending its use to all the students I encounter in my workshops.
The clever approach for the makers of Endnote would have been to learn from you, rather than sue you. If they had done this I might be still using their product.
I...wanted to make a donation to zotero. How would I go about doing this?
Bumping an old thread so that cmpalmer & others might see Trevor's blog entry about CHNM donations. It is not clear to me how exactly such donations & matching funds would be spent. Just all-and-miscellaneous Center expenses?
The NEH Challenge Grant funds will be used to build a $3 million endowment to support general CHNM infrastructure spending and ongoing development. Zotero is just one among many CHNM projects, all of which share both human and material resources.
The National Endowment for the Humanities, knowing that almost all grants (from them as well as most funders) go to the initial creation of projects rather than their ongoing maintenance and continued innovation, gives challenge grants to build endowments at institutions that can support sustained efforts over years and decades. The Center for History and New Media has been around for fifteen years already and keeps dozens of projects alive and thriving, including Zotero. Contributions to the endowment aren't for coffee; they are used to buttress the common personnel and infrastructure to support these efforts--all of which are open access and open source.
Upgrade Storage
This lawsuit would have been silly if it wasn't that disgusting.
I'd suggest that all of us inform our libraries about the advantages of Zotero and ask them to end contracts with Thomson (if they have any) and support the free, open-source alternative. If Thomson loses the lawsuit -- and I'm sure they will -- it will at least have created lots of free publicity for Zotero...
Hopefully sometime soon the Zotero team talks publicly about how they plan to proceed with this.
Otherwise thumps up to Zotero and if this actually does become relevant I'll join those volunteering donations.
The clever approach for the makers of Endnote would have been to learn from you, rather than sue you. If they had done this I might be still using their product.
We are asking those who appreciate our work--Zotero or Omeka or the popular History News Network or critical digital archives like the Papers of the War Department--to help with the creation of that endowment.