Salvete! Real quick shallow comment - unless Follett has done oodles of development while I wasn't looking, it's not nearly as good a product as Koha. I've no qualms about saying that we've ground to make up in terms of quality if we want to spar with the larger academic systems, but Follett is just not there. They're worse than Dynix, imho.
-------- This is different than competition- competition is healthy!
The philosophy of opensource software development, by all accounts, is one of cooperation and growth. Maturity and communication. Utility and function. Financial gains are not really addressed- yet we all recognize the need to feed our own families, and of course our vendors and their employees share that need.
As I said earlier, our decision to hire a vendor was simple and clear. It is up to the vendor to figure out how to deliver the goods, within the terms of both our contract and the opensource license we all share, and we as customers simply accept that.
This list is surprising for its diversity. I wonder if there are any out there in an environment similar to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. That school has a successful business incubator, and that sort of model might bear fruit if we wanted to address both competition and sustainability. If we had a foundation, the proceeds might be able to foster new businesses that supported Koha according to Open Source principles. In addition, it could sure up old ones that might be in dire straits. A third function could be funding non sexy but highly necessary jobs such as revamping and optimising old code. Cheers, Brooke