If anyone is using the MLS software produced by the LDS church and happens to want to run it from a shared network drive, I just figured out how. I also found the Unofficial MLS FAQ at ldsoss.org and was pleased to find out that you can run MLS on Linux. Since they’re using a Wiki, I added the instructions to run it from a shared network drive on the FAQ.

I was also pleased to read that there have been reports of MLS being officially released for use on Linux and that there is also discussion about making it open source so members can contribute to it. From the looks of things, there are already people ready and willing to contribute, myself included, to make it a more useful and usable application. It would also be free for the church.

We just migrated from MIS and FIS to the new MLS system, and while the new system is better in many ways, I am still dumbfounded that there was no formal migration process. All of the local data we had entered was not available, the addresses all had to be reformatted and other information had to be re-entered by hand. It’s still not all done and several people have spent 10-15 hours updating them.

If the MyWard software can read the old files and create HTML files, I don’t understand why MLS couldn’t have done the same, and converted the old data into the new format. There are likely reasons I’m not aware of, but at first glance it seems to be a gaping hole that has caused hundreds if not thousands of extra man hours to resolve, when it could have all been automated.