On Wed, 17 May 2006 20:48:16 +1000 Paul Gear <paul@gear.dyndns.org> wrote:
Hi folks,
Hi Paul, I don't know Emilda, but as a Koha developer, let me answer about your Pros and Cons :-)
* [Emilda cons] Developer/user communities not so active
That's a really bad point in my opinion (see my conclusion below).
* [Koha pros] Pretty (the suggested demo sites look awesome!)
I suppose you've seen Liblime [1] templates. They are not the default template but they are always up to date when new releases are available. The important is that you can easily switch to other templates and even create your own. We've planned to open an online extension manager where anyone will be able to contribute by adding a template. Hopefully, it should open by the end of this month (May 2006).
* [Koha pros] Seems to have quite an active developer and user community
You're right, the developer community is really active and worldwide (mainly USA, France and New-Zealand). I'm sure we could improve the size of the user community by using more user oriented tools (that's another debate).
* [Koha cons] Install not so simple - no Debian package; requires messing about with CPAN
I totally agree, installing Koha is not simple. We have to make an effort to simplify the installation procedure. Nevertheless, in my opinion, Koha will hardly be as simple to install as a Php/MySQL software. Simply because of Perl additionnal modules. Furthermore, with Koha 3.0 will come a new step in the technical installation: zebra server. I think Emilda also uses one (I confirm after visiting Emilda website), so if you've found Emilda installation easy, it means Koha can make zebra installation easy.
* [Koha pros] I hate Perl [...]
Of course Perl is more complexe than PHP. As a PHP and Perl developer, I appreciate the simplicity of PHP and the possibilities of Perl data structure. If the Koha team had to make a technology choice today to build a new application from scratch, I'm not sure Perl would still be used. At the beginning of the project in 1999, when Chris (from Katipo) decided which technology to use, PHP was not as popular as today and Perl was quite the most obvious choice for a web based application. The advantage of Perl versus PHP is CPAN, even with PHP having Pear. In some way, the drawback of Perl is also CPAN, because you need to install many dependencies from CPAN, check the compatibility, be sure the module is maintained. Anyway, the most important is that Perl is a free software oriented programming language. Such as Python, Ruby or PHP (even if PHP is driven by a single private company, in the same way of thinking PostgreSQL is more "free" than MySQL). I would understand the complaint if Koha was written in .Net or Java for example.
Are there any other considerations that i should be looking at? [...]
On a free software project, one of the most important thing to consider is the activity of the project: how many developers, are they active, how open is the project (easy to contribute, features discussed between users and developers to reach the best solution, availability of a roadmap in time and features). I would even say that maturity is less important than the activity (even if Koha is quite mature). With a good activity, you can be sure the project won't be abandonned in a year. [1] http://liblime.com Cheers, -- Pierrick LE GALL INEO media system