A way to nip any PTFS threats of totalitarianism in the bud is for a group of people to get together and just spew out for free what PTFS seeks to capitalize on... Everyone gains! well except perhaps PTFS who seems to be sticking their first foot out an a nasty manner... oh well! Ed# In a message dated 4/29/2010 10:12:09 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, dschust1@tx.rr.com writes: Two things. With the blog post on the koha-community site and this email and comments from the community I am not seeing two parties trying to work together. PTFS - is a company and has run on a corporate model - they "purchased" assets so they need to decide how to handle those assets. In that same concept the community WANTS some of those assets so I don't think these discussions on the list are going to help us gain what we all want. A system we can all work together to make better. If all of these people were sitting in a room together they would have been able to work this out, but due to distance and time communication is harder to achieve.
From my understanding the HLT committee had agreed to a phone call which is more along the standard communication in which PTFS was comfortable but backed out. At which point things started to degrade and positions started to be posted on the web to the community.
I know this doesn't look like a business transaction, but for PTFS it is and that is how they have known how to do business in the past. They will need to become comfortable in talking and working with the community but it can't happen over night. The LibLime purchase has only been about a month or a little more, we need to work together to resolve our differences to come to a common understanding. I hope both parties read this and can pull back rethink how this will be approached and try again. We are all very attached to this emotionally so we need to be careful on how we react to postings and emails in a professional manner. I would hate to see this return to the situation we had 8 months ago. At least PTFS was willing to talk with HLT which is more than we had gotten previously. David Schuster Sherman, Kelly wrote:
LibLime Thoughts
LibLime (a division of PTFS) is disappointed to learn that the HLT Koha Committee has chosen to cancel our scheduled conference call. We thought that we would discuss issues important to the ongoing development of Koha and that we would form a partnership that would permit us to work
together
globally to build a better open source ILS solution for libraries.
LibLime wants to assume the best and understands that the HLT Committee is new to business matters, acquisitions, and financial transactions on the scale required to move the Koha project to the next level. Perhaps the newness of these experiences has resulted in their one-sided point of view; their conflicting and inaccurate web posts; and their decision to participate in a conference call, only to decline it the next day.
The PTFS acquisition of LibLime *will* take the Koha project to the next level by utilizing agile software development and systems engineering methodologies. Working closely with libraries, this effort will result in advancing Koha into the ultimate open source ILS solution.
We will support Koha through the koha.org website and we will continue to work towards our goal of developing and deploying a true next generation system that manages both print and digital collections in a single application. We are asking for participants from Koha libraries that may want to partner with us to maintain documentation, design new development features, catalog bug issues, and promote Koha successes world-wide. If you are ready to help build a better Koha please contact ksherman@ptfs.com.
Kelly Sherman
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