This has been a very interesting thread and I thank the original poster for sharing this information. Nicolas brought up some critical issues in this e-mail below and I am sure I am not alone in being interested in a response from Joshua Ferraro or other LibLime representative. Perhaps I missed a response, but if one has not been posted, please consider doing so. Kind regards, Rich Boulet -----Original Message----- From: koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz [mailto:koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of Nicolas Morin Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 5:08 AM To: Joshua Ferraro Cc: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz; Joann Ransom Subject: Re: [Koha] Support for Koha On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 1:56 AM, Joshua Ferraro<jmf@liblime.com> wrote:
Since this has turned into an attack on LibLime I feel I must state for the record that, as far as I know, LibLime is the ONLY vendor that has historically contributed 100% of our code as soon as it was approved by a customer's quality assurance testing. As far as I know, every other vendor in the Koha community intentionally withholds customizations that are only available to their customers, or don't take the time to fully integrate their code into the mainline Koha codebase (understandably so, as this either gives them a competitive edge, or they simply don't have time to contribute it).
I've had contractors who have worked for me, and for other vendors in the community confirm this of nearly all of the active Koha vendors listed on the support page (if that's not the case at your firm, and you feel I'm misrepresenting you, please correct me).
Well, since you ask: yes, I do want to correct you. BibLibre did historically contribute 100% of our code back to the Koha community. And no, we don't intentionally withhold customizations that would be only available to our customers. There used to be an understanding between vendors that as far as possible we stick with the official version of Koha and avoid, again, as far as possible, deploying customized versions. I want to get back to the minutes of this meeting themselves. Even though there's no talk in there of violating in any way the letter of the license, and even though your email here emphasizes that it's basically "business as usual, you know, a little customization, all vendors do that", I think the spirit of the meeting seems to have been very different. If I may quote from the central section of the minutes : "Charles - i'm a low level player but what he sees is a .com organization talking to a bunch of .edu organizations with different philosophies. Where/when does this mean a split in the product. Josh - 1. that's already happened . Koha by LibLime different already than what others delivered. 2. getting considerable pressure by sponsored developments to embargoing the code. 3. LL cannot change the philosophy to contribute to the community. Need to have a timed release that gives us a strategic advantage. Nora - this is very upsetting and disconcerting to us. That's not why we joined on. Josh - we would still give you all the community stuff Becky - but that breaks the value of open source Rob - the conditions have changed in being able to support the model. The user community has to answer why are we uncomfortable sharing and how the community is having adverse effect on why we got together in the first place. Vicky - would like to explore more positive ways for getting LL funding rather than break the community model of Koha. Josh - not making it not opensource - but we will hold it back." If I can sum that up, it seems to me that: * Josh considers that "a split in the product" has "already happened": we have a fork, we just didn't know it. Can you confirm this? * Some of LL's customers around the table were upset by this and stressed that it all "breaks the value of open source": the letter of the GPL is respected all right; the spirit seems gone. * You, Josh, stated quite clearly, according to the minutes, that you expected LL to retain control of the code base, because "the release manager has final say and if we lose that capability then what if our customers are not served by the product". We could say the same thing, and Catalyst, and every single vendor: if you don't accept the premise that someone else can be the R. Manager, you simply cannot have an open source community. If we follow your line of reasoning, there'd be as many Koha as there is vendors, and there'd never have been an OS ILS in the 1st place : we'd be called ExLibris France and you'd be called SirsiDynix Ohio, or something of the sort. OSS works when developers and vendors in general cooperate: J. Wagner from PTFS entering enhancements requests in bugs.koha.org yesterday, indicating intended developement by PTFS is certainly how things are intended to work. And by the way, the current R. Manager is not a LibLime employee, Galen having started a new job with another company just this week. * can you commit to Galen staying on as the R. Manager for 3.2 and to someone else outside of Liblime potentially fullfilling that role after that? * is it possible that the internal debate which the minutes of this meeting highlights among LL customers, about the "spirit of Open Source and community involvement" also existed within LibLime and played a part in the departure of several employees recently, or not at all? Cheers, Nicolas -- Nicolas Morin Mobile: +33(0)633 19 11 36 http://www.biblibre.com _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha