I agree completely. I will also be happy to donate kohademos.org to the Koha non-profit, when it is formed. Kyle http://www.kylehall.info Information Technology Crawford County Federated Library System ( http://www.ccfls.org ) On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Thomas Dukleth <kohalist@agogme.com> wrote:
Reply inline:
1. MINUTES TO RESOLVE BUT FIRST THINGS FIRST.
Original Subject: Re: [Koha] Koha demo links on koha.org
On Fri, October 9, 2009 14:12, Kyle Hall wrote:
What we really need is fr.demo.koha.org, en.demo.koha.org, and so on. This would require Liblimes assistance, and we can ask, but I don't know how long it would take to set up.
It would take only a few minutes to direct domains or subdomains to something under community control. We should move on with the business of setting up a legal entity for the Koha project which can manage that and receive funding.
2. FASTEST WAY TO ORGANISE OURSELVES.
The fastest way to set up such an entity which can receive donations to support what may be needed at least for an interim period is through having a foundation held by HLT or SPI for a temporary period. Setting up an independent Koha project entity should also be done but would take perhaps some months of discussions about bylaws which we could be discussing while already having legal status via another organisation such as HLT or SPI.
An independent foundation now choice for which the majority voted in the first poll perhaps without understanding the question or implication well would delay matters because of all the discussion about bylaws and other matters needed and which ought to occur before registering. [There were some problems with the design of the first poll which we should fix in future by having wide community discussion of the drafting of any poll.] Registering an independent entity with the government is easy and may take little more than a couple of weeks. More weeks may be required to obtain certification of non-profit status. Yet before all that one has to know all the particulars of the registration and decide in what jurisdiction it should be registered primarily which may take months to agree.
I believe that I understand correctly that both HLT and SPI either already have in SPI's case or within a few days can have in HLT's case a bank account in the US and in Europe to receive monetary donations in the local currency. Receiving donations in the local currency would allow the project to direct their use in that currency without any loss of value in currency conversion. HLT certainly already has a bank account to receive donations in another local currency where there is significant interest in the project. HLT is certainly the most flexible.
I favour HLT because of their greater flexibility and commitment to the Koha project from its very inception. SPI has much better governance rules which we could discuss adopting or adapting for ourselves as an organisation held by another organisation and later as an independent organisation. HLT's charter grants them perhaps a little too much flexibility and the Koha community should expect a legal guarantee from them to take on the full trust of the community. They have demonstrated over the years their complete willingness to not try to exert any undue influence on the project for any private interests of their library. Combining that implicit trust with a guarantee for the Koha community gives me great confidence.
I might be persuaded that SPI is a better choice but I merely guess that the very size of SPI would make it more difficult to obtain rapid attention when it may be needed. Perhaps some reports from other projects they host would persuade me otherwise.
The Software Freedom Conservancy could also be a good choice but their worst problem is that they have become so popular that to preserve the degree and quality of attention given to each accepted project there is now a three to six month waiting list for application consideration. I think that the application waiting period is now too much time for the level of impatience I perceive from those most active in the Koha community.
In the final ballot, please vote for a project organisation which we can actually implement now. Of the possibilities currently nominated that is only a foundation held by HLT and SPI for an interim period. The project can have all assets held on its behalf transferred to own independent foundation soon afterwords but everything needs to be agreed and in place first.
2. MANY PROBLEMS WITH THE COMMUNITY WEBSITE.
Somewhat of an annoyance, the 'Demos' link on koha.org takes me to the showcase, not to demos.
I had identified a large number of such problems including that one specifically when the new website went up. I reported them to the mailing list but I have not yet taken the time to report them formally as bugs.
The worst problem is that the navigation links are not displayed in a visible manner on the world's most commonly used web browser, Internet Explorer with the default IE configuration. I have had to fix CSS problems with Internet Explorer and it can be tricky because some things are interpreted backwards to the standard. The default Plone stylesheets would have worked but they were not modified or replaced for the Koha website with cross-browser compatibility in mind.
3. NEW WEBSITES.
As an alternative, I just registered kohademos.org. I could make en.kohademos.org point to http://demo.koha-fr.org/, and fr.kohademos.org point to http://demo.koha-fr.org/cgi-bin/koha/changelanguage.pl?language=fr-FR. It seems like a reasonable way to handle it would be to have one company host a demo in their native language, for each language. This would spread out the amount of work and bandwidth required.
We should coordinate such efforts through an entity in which we can place our collective trust for holding the domains and other key aspects of the project.
When we have ourselves properly organised, then we can make requests of LibLime from a position of strength as a community prepared to offer an alternative if LibLime is disinclined to cooperate. Presently, with LibLime in control of the community domain and no official community alternative to offer any request is made from a position of weakness.
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