[Reposted with minor corrections including a spelling correction for the meaning intended.] There was much discussion of the issue of the arrangement of listings on the pay for support page in May, when LibLime introduced the new Plone based website. I think that it is the least important part of the koha.org website, although, understandably it was a highly contentious part of discussions in May. The most important comment I have to make on the issue is that we should not be telling the user what the user should value most as a criteria for arranging support companies. There was some support in May for offering multiple views of support company listings and allowing every user to use one more allowing each to satisfy his own particular interests. Publicly shared arrangement schemes should be both fair and useful. VARIOUS TYPES OF ARRANGEMENTS. Utility should be rationally related to the function provided. Quality of support services or various types of support services would be the most useful means of ordering but we have no fair objective means of measuring quality of support services. Such judgements are best left to the prospective customer. See section 3.2.1.1.5, "Rational schemes and irrational measures", in my first comment on the new Plone based website in May, http://lists.koha.org/pipermail/koha-devel/2009-May/009541.html . We should not pretend to measure what we cannot actually measure. Other less fundamental aspects of support services such as geographic and linguistic measures also entail a point of view about the arrangement of geographic areas or languages in any particular presentation. Geographic areas have to be ordered in some manner. Maps have an orientation and distortions of projection. One aspect of Paul Poulain's point about maps is that maps are liable to show empty regions unless all regions would be filled by those offering support services everywhere. Text based arrangement of geographical information avoids some problems of visual maps and should not be excluded from a geographical presentation. Languages have to be ordered in some manner. Historical arrangement may have value to some but it should actually be historical. The current arrangement on Koha.org is not historical. Alphabetical arrangement is not a rational organisational scheme because it is strictly arbitrary by the happenstance of the placement of letters. It has the virtue of being universally understood. The arbitrary has the possibility of seeming fair by being impartial but fairness is not a necessary consequence of arbitrary impartiality. Trade naming choices can also be taken to ensure early placement in alphabetical ordering and undo fairness but we have not seen that problem in the Koha community. Thomas Dukleth Agogme 109 E 9th Street, 3D New York, NY 10003 USA http://www.agogme.com +1 212-674-3783 Original Subject: Re: [Koha] Liblime, Koha, BibLibre and FLOSS On Sun, October 25, 2009 18:36, Chris Nighswonger wrote:
On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Paul Poulain <paul.poulain@biblibre.com> wrote:
Nicole Engard a écrit :
As long as Liblime is the only entity with complete control over koha.org <http://koha.org>, that's not going to happen.
The idea is that this is going to change - we're going to form a committee and work with the group we choose in the survey to control Koha assets.
You'll be surprised, but my vote is -1 : that could let ppl think noone can provide commercial support in their area, which is not the case. And being in a given country does not mean you work only in this country.
This tendency could be offset by a simple note to the effect that many/all of these companies provide international support for Koha.
Kind Regards, Chris _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha