There has been some concern expressed recently about PTFS/LibLime owning the registry entries for several domain names with the word Koha in them. I would like to address that and other issues. · In mid-March, of this year, PTFS announced the acquisition of LibLime from Metavore. · In April, LibLime attempted to communicate with Horowhenua Library Trust Koha Committee about taking over support for koha.org, but communications were not successful. · In May, LibLime released Harley as well as approximately 70 individual feature commits from LIBLIME customer-sponsored development and LIBLIME corporate-sponsored development. Harley was 3.0.x Koha with all of the 70 feature commits included. This gave potential Koha users the opportunity to either download Harley with the features, or select individual features for individual use. While 3.2 was nearing official release at that time, our customers who sponsored the development were pleased to see several of those features included in the 3.2 plans. · Throughout the remainder of the summer, LibLime has continued to develop sponsored features for customers under contracts acquired through the purchase of LibLime. I am saddened at the criticism directed at PTFS/LibLime and our employees on blog posts, listservs, and other electronic communication forums. Since Q3 2008, PTFS has been participating in the Koha community. This participation includes code submission, attendance and sponsorship at KohaCon 2009, active use of Bugzilla for new feature development, and IRC/Listserv contributions. We have expanded the worldwide use of Koha by bringing many new customers to the project, and we continue to promote the benefits of open source ILS solutions. We have released customer-sponsored and PTFS/LibLime-sponsored code for worldwide use, and we will continue to do so. In regards to the domain names, it is part of our standard operating procedures to purchase domain names in the business markets we are involved with and LibLime has acquired multiple domain names related to Koha and open source ILS. In addition, some of these names were also transferred over as a part of the LibLime acquisition. PTFS owns many domain names in all our lines of business. We did not try to hide this action and could have made these transactions private. Nothing has been done with the domain names at this point. They do not have web sites built around them, nor do they re-direct anywhere. They are simply owned by LibLime, thus preventing any non-Koha entity or competitor from acquiring the domains and diverting potential future Koha users to other ILS solutions. This is to the benefit of all Koha users and developers. LibLime would like to help the Koha community build a better Koha for the future. There is much to do to develop the application so that it can compete head to head with commercial solutions in all library markets. LibLime’s goal is to help make sure that Koha becomes the dominant open source ILS solution and not just another alternative. To ensure success, we believe that the Koha organization needs to grow into an organization that will globally unite all those involved with Koha. The project needs many companies, independent developers and Koha affiliated intuitions and customers worldwide to participate and work harmoniously together help build the world’s best open source ILS. The HLT Koha Committee was established as holding body for the Koha project property. We believe that it is now time to move to the next step and create a full-fledged governance structure capable of supporting Koha as a rapidly expanding global open source endeavor. In this regards, LibLime will help organize and fund the creation of a Koha Software Foundation as a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation. Once the establishment of the Koha Software Foundation is complete, PTFS/LibLime will transfer the assets we own related to Koha to this corporation, including Koha related domain names as well as pending trademark applications. LibLime officially requests that interested parties contact us who are interested in helping to create and manage this foundation. We would welcome and hope that multiple worldwide groups will all participate together. Initially, LibLime will help to fund the development of articles, bylaws and governance documents and help the foundation to become a self supporting organization. LibLime does not aim to dominate or control the foundation; we will expect to participate as any qualified organization and as a voting member. We believe that the establishment of an independent foundation will provide the structure for ongoing management and governance of the Koha project and should provide the basis for a less divisive atmosphere surrounding the efforts of all the stakeholders involved, including the companies involved in development and support services as well as the libraries and consortium that rely on Koha. Our decisions on how LibLime will continue to proceed in the Koha project will continue to be based upon communications we receive, proposals to support the Koha Foundation and acceptance of our organization as a viable part of the community to help Koha become the world’s best ILS. Best regards: John Yokley CEO PTFS/LibLime