[Koha] LibLime and Koha Community

[Paul Poulain]

Le 17/02/2011 15:34, Tom Hanstra a écrit :
> I hope I'm not kicking a hornet's nest here.  I'm just trying to get a 
> handle on how compatible these are and how to decide which version might 
> best meet our local needs.
Definetly, and without any doubt : the koha-community version.
Definetly yes it's a hornet nest. So I'll try to answer clearly and
without awakening sleeping hornets ;-)

Just to be clear : I'm Paul Poulain, from France, served as Release
Manager for Koha 2.0 and 2.2. I've founded BibLibre in France 3 years
ago. I have nothing against PTFS/LL but I think their strategy won't be
successfull. I think Koha project loosed many time with those problems,
but it's behind us now.

A small history history :
* at the beginning (2000), koha.org was managed by katipo, where chris
C. and some other were working (katipo was the Koha v1 author)
* in 2007, LibLime bought koha.org, the katipo Koha dev team and katipo
New Zealand customers
* one year later, the katipo-now-LL ppl resigned from LL
* in 2008 PTFS started his involvement in Koha. They were coldly
welcomed by the community & LibLime (LL & PTFS are operating in US) They
sended some patches but were considered as a wolf in a sheepfold, so
patches were included, but always with a cold welcome. Note the
technical relationships have always be better than the strategic
relationships.
* in 2009, some/many devs from LL resigned as well and, in sept, 11th LL
announced LLEK, a hosted version that is not OpenSource because the
source is not distributed (reminder : koha.org is "owned" by LL...)
* in late 2009, early 2010, PTFS bought LL
* in early 2010, the koha community (ie : everybody except LL & PTFS)
decided to move to http://www.koha-community.org because we had no
control & easy access over the content of the other website. All
developers tools were also moved for the same reason.

So, as of today :
* PTFS/LibLime has a LLEK software that is not Koha, and you can't download
* PTFS/LibLime has a "Harley" release of Koha, that is OpenSource,
patches have been submitted, I think 50% of them are now in Koha. But it
is not Koha and unless i'm mistaking, it does not evolve (and is based
on 3.0.2 version of Koha). The remaining 50% may be included in Koha, or
replaced by someone else dev that achieve the same goal.
* Koha-community.org has the "uptodate" version of "the community".

Hoping I answered you questions.

-- 
Paul POULAIN
http://www.biblibre.com
Expert en Logiciels Libres pour l'info-doc
Tel : (33) 4 91 81 35 08