Steve (and all), I support this idea and if there's a way I can be of assistance, let's talk. I think getting a ball like this rolling would have to come from someone like us - people who are not actively involved in just one of the products but who sees the importance of both products/projects succeeding. Lori Ayre The Galecia Group On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Steve Wills <swills@beyond-print.com>wrote:
Heya guys,
I am posting this using my personal email so that it is clear that this letter is from Steve Wills and NOT from NELINET nor from Lyrasis. This morning I posted a letter on the Koha site where there is a debate going on about whether they should form a foundation around the Koha software. This was my response to that community, which I would like to share with you as well.
Sung to the tune of "Where Have All the Sources Gone".
My Two cents is that we do not form a Koha community or an Evergreen community in competition. Let's talk about forming/joining a library community which would support and endorse Library support projects in cooperation.
The Evergreen community is at almost that same place at the age of three that this Koha community seems to be with respect to this subject. The histories are different in terms of development detail but within the library community, there appears to be some blood in the water and that is making it difficult to see clearly downstream. Open Source communities are formed for the benefit of a global world in need of affordable, considered solutions. I would propose that we think about a foundation dedicated to managing and perfecting solutions for libraries with a structure that draws from such successful FOSS projects as Elicpse, Sourceforge, and Apache. Such a foundation would be chartered to serve librarian, patron and developer alike without any particular alligence to Koha, Evergreen or whatever else we spawn in the future that we wish to give back to the library community.
Steve Wills