28 June, 2002 To the Koha community; Namaskar, This week's note is a short one. Not because we haven't done much, but because we're all getting pretty busy. I'm currently talking to a couple of organizations about getting some more visibility for Koha. I don't want to tip my hand just yet, but I'm hopeful that we'll see Koha beginning to make appearances in the bigger Open Source world 'Real Soon Now'. We're also starting to see some more feedback from other library centric Open Source projects. It looks like the idea of some inter-project cooperation is gaining ground. One interesting area that came up was in helping one another in securing financing (sponsorship, hired work, or grants all come to mind) -- this will be an important area for Koha moving forward. Free Software doesn't come without a price tag, the price is just hidden better than with other software. Much of Koha is developed by volunteers in their 'spare' time. If there were funding available for given tasks, it would give the developers more time to work on Koha (because they'd need to spend less time making a living). If you're interested in helping this way, please take a look at <http://koha.org/installation/support.html> for some potential vendors. 1.2 We're still hard at work on 1.2.1. In fact, Steve Tonnesen has produced three Release Candidates this week alone. He's also made the job easier by automating this process, so expect to see Release Candidates for every future release -- it's another way we're trying to improve our process. Other big features for 1.2.1 include: * a much improved installer (it only requires 1 ip address, and creates a branch and a printer during install now) * more work on the Z39.50 programs * sample data that can be installed to test a new koha system Many thanks to Paul and Steve who've both jumped in and are making the 1.2 series really shine. Translations The first question people seem to ask when volunteering to do translations of Koha is, "Where do I start?". Since we're still on the verge of having the application readily translatable, this question deserves a thoughtful answer. There are a number of things that could be translated and provide value to the project. These newsletters, if translated, could help advertise Koha to people who don't currently know about it. The Manual could be translated to help users and developers who don't understand english. I think one of the best documents to translate would be the INSTALL document. If we could get this done in multiple languages, it would be much easier to get Koha into the hands of the people who will help us make it suitible for international use. IRC Meeting Due to some scheduling conflicts, this weeks irc meeting was postponed. We're going to shoot for 7/11 (7/4 is a big holiday in the US, so that won't work either). The proposed agenda is currently: * CVS * 1.2 schedule * 1.4 plans * thoughts on templating * translations * documentation housekeeping * community (Koha, and the larger OSS4lib, and the larger library * new koha website Community The Koha community is continuing to grow. More libraries are trying Koha out, and many of them are sticking with it. We've added more people to the developers list, several of whom are concentration on testing new Koha releases. Another exciting advance is the new <www.koha.org> website. Rachel and her team at Katipo have done a wonderful job. I'd like to hear back from people who are currently using or investigating Koha. If you've got stories, requests, or suggestions, please feel free to drop me a line at: kaitiaki@koha.org Dhanyabad, -pate Pat Eyler Kaitiaki of the Koha Project ps. This weeks language is Bengal. Hopefully my usage isn't too far off. Thanks Md. Aftabuddin, for helping out.