The current debate about the required ease of installation that Koha must aspire to has again raised the necessity to distinguish between Open Source code ( free availability ) and software products which do not cost anything ( any amount of currency ) to use. Let us not forget that an integrated library management software package has always been a very complex piece of technology. This complexity will always translate into cost of maintenance and raises the threshhold skill levels required to install and configure a package. As Mike Ray pointed out, many of us make a living by providing the bridge between the technical requirements and the end-users' need for simplicity and ease of use. I am not trying to justify crypto-babble installation jargon. There is enough of that spontaneously without trying to inculcate its creation. But the need to keep a given codebase abstracted enough from a particular circumstance ( OS/hardware/language ) that it can appeal to a wide audience necessarily requires the installation personnel ( IT staff ) to provide the bridge. And Koha very admirably keeps that bridge quite small. There are many librarians who have managed it through patience and learning as they went. An IT professional may have an easier time of it, if the variety of the biases inherent in the installers fits their own experience. It pros will also bitch more pointedly when they find something in the biases of the installer which offends against their own preferences. Let's not get caught up in a religious war over particular OS/installer preferences. Koha is young, still struggling toward version 2.0 There will doubtless be many evolutionary steps between now and "maturity". The functionaolity of the catalogue and the user records is well on its way. Creating bibliographic records requires skilled understanding of library science and practices. So too the installation and configuration of the software package. This is simply a common fact in the nature of the work. Cheers, Erik -- Erik Stainsby Systems Support Technician, Web and Database Services, Vancouver Public Library 604.331.4083