Fwd: LibLime ideas on a Koha Software Foundation
Hi I've posted a brief outline or summation of LibLime's ideas about a Koha Software Foundation on the wiki -- we seek your comments -- http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Forming_a_Koha_Foundation#United_States Please let me know if there is a more logical place to place these on the wiki - under Forming a Foundation / Locations for an Independent Koha Organisation/ United States seemed to fit the flow in place but I am happy to cross post or move if it will help. Amy -- Amy Begg De Groff Product Manager LibLime, a Division of PTFS 1-301-654-8088 ext 162 adegroff@liblime.com -- Amy Begg De Groff Product Manager *LibLime, a Division of PTFS* 1-301-654-8088 ext 162 adegroff@liblime.com
DeGroff, Amy wrote:
I've posted a brief outline or summation of LibLime's ideas about a Koha Software Foundation on the wiki -- we seek your comments -- http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Forming_a_Koha_Foundation#United_States
Please let me know if there is a more logical place to place these on the wiki - under Forming a Foundation / Locations for an Independent Koha Organisation/ United States seemed to fit the flow in place but I am happy to cross post or move if it will help.
A foundation 40%-controlled by Liblime doesn't seem independent to me, so I feel it should be moved, but I can't think of how to name where it should go. Does a vendor tie seem in keeping with a FOSS project host corporation to anyone? I've added a comment to re-explain the difference between a foundation and an association. I'll ignore the "intellectual assets" as that's against community policy. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#IntellectualProperty Agreeing to any permanent representation on the board would open a can of worms because I expect all 30 or so current vendors would like something similar and several were giving to this project community before LibLime even launched. It's hard to measure how much, because I'm sure we've seen patches committed under the wrong author's byline. It would be a bit odd to give permanent credit for "standing" only to one company that bought the 2005-9 LibLime business, wouldn't it? So I feel like PTFS's basic preconditions are obviously unworkable and this means we're at a more obvious and clear deadlock. Can anyone explain what I've missed and why I'm wrong? Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. Past Koha Release Manager (2.0), LMS programmer, statistician, webmaster. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire for Koha work http://www.software.coop/products/koha
MJ Ray writes
So I feel like PTFS's basic preconditions are obviously unworkable and this means we're at a more obvious and clear deadlock. Can anyone explain what I've missed and why I'm wrong?
I can't. I think the whole thing will not be over until the community changes the name of the software and gets another domain for it. Cheers, Thomas Krichel http://openlib.org/home/krichel http://authorclaim.org/profile/pkr1 skype: thomaskrichel
On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, MJ Ray wrote:
DeGroff, Amy wrote:
I've posted a brief outline or summation of LibLime's ideas about a Koha Software Foundation on the wiki -- we seek your comments -- http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Forming_a_Koha_Foundation#United_States
Please let me know if there is a more logical place to place these on the wiki - under Forming a Foundation / Locations for an Independent Koha Organisation/ United States seemed to fit the flow in place but I am happy to cross post or move if it will help.
A foundation 40%-controlled by Liblime doesn't seem independent to me, so I feel it should be moved, but I can't think of how to name where it should go. Does a vendor tie seem in keeping with a FOSS project host corporation to anyone?
it's actually very common, think about Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSE to name just three. David Lang
I've added a comment to re-explain the difference between a foundation and an association.
I'll ignore the "intellectual assets" as that's against community policy. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#IntellectualProperty
Agreeing to any permanent representation on the board would open a can of worms because I expect all 30 or so current vendors would like something similar and several were giving to this project community before LibLime even launched. It's hard to measure how much, because I'm sure we've seen patches committed under the wrong author's byline. It would be a bit odd to give permanent credit for "standing" only to one company that bought the 2005-9 LibLime business, wouldn't it?
So I feel like PTFS's basic preconditions are obviously unworkable and this means we're at a more obvious and clear deadlock. Can anyone explain what I've missed and why I'm wrong?
Regards,
david@lang.hm wrote:
On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, MJ Ray wrote:
A foundation 40%-controlled by Liblime doesn't seem independent to me, so I feel it should be moved, but I can't think of how to name where it should go. Does a vendor tie seem in keeping with a FOSS project host corporation to anyone?
it's actually very common, think about Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSE to name just three.
Fedora, Ubuntu and SuSE seem to be dependent company projects of RedHat, Canonical and Novell respectively. Also, Ubuntu wasn't entirely FOSS last I checked and SuSE was and wasn't at various times. (I had to double-check Fedora because the Fedora Project looks like a stand-alone project host at first glance, but now I'm pretty sure there is only RedHat and no project host corporation. That's quite a marketing achievement.) So does this also suggest that a dependent company project might not remain entirely FOSS, too? Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. Past Koha Release Manager (2.0), LMS programmer, statistician, webmaster. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire for Koha work http://www.software.coop/products/koha
On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, MJ Ray wrote:
david@lang.hm wrote:
On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, MJ Ray wrote:
A foundation 40%-controlled by Liblime doesn't seem independent to me, so I feel it should be moved, but I can't think of how to name where it should go. Does a vendor tie seem in keeping with a FOSS project host corporation to anyone?
it's actually very common, think about Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSE to name just three.
Fedora, Ubuntu and SuSE seem to be dependent company projects of RedHat, Canonical and Novell respectively. Also, Ubuntu wasn't entirely FOSS last I checked and SuSE was and wasn't at various times.
(I had to double-check Fedora because the Fedora Project looks like a stand-alone project host at first glance, but now I'm pretty sure there is only RedHat and no project host corporation. That's quite a marketing achievement.)
So does this also suggest that a dependent company project might not remain entirely FOSS, too?
it depends how you define FOSS, I don't know why you think that Ubuntu doesn't qualify, but there are MANY other examples of opensource projects run by companies, other people mentioned MySQL, but there is also ghostscript, cups, LLVM, OpenOffice.org that I can think of off the top of my head. Apple sponsers quite a few different projects. David Lang
david@lang.hm wrote:
On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, MJ Ray wrote:
So does this also suggest that a dependent company project might not remain entirely FOSS, too?
it depends how you define FOSS, I don't know why you think that Ubuntu doesn't qualify, but there are MANY other examples of opensource projects run by companies, other people mentioned MySQL, but there is also ghostscript, cups, LLVM, OpenOffice.org that I can think of off the top of my head. Apple sponsers quite a few different projects.
I define FOSS as Free and Open Source Software, as usual. See http://fsfe.org/about/basics/freesoftware.en.html Ubuntu doesn't qualify because of software one couldn't modify. The examples that I recognise on that list don't have their own not-for-profit host corporations, but they are brilliant! MySQL I covered in another email, as it ends up with founders forking into a Swiss not-for-profit. ghostscript has definitely moved around between FOSS (GPL) and non-FOSS (AFPL) versions over time. OpenOffice.org is currently having a forking good time: let's wait and see how it ends. If anyone posts more, I'm not going to continue pointing out that these aren't projects with their own not-for-profit host corporations. Hope that helps, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. Past Koha Release Manager (2.0), LMS programmer, statistician, webmaster. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire for Koha work http://www.software.coop/products/koha
On Fri, 15 Oct 2010, MJ Ray wrote:
david@lang.hm wrote:
On Thu, 14 Oct 2010, MJ Ray wrote:
So does this also suggest that a dependent company project might not remain entirely FOSS, too?
it depends how you define FOSS, I don't know why you think that Ubuntu doesn't qualify, but there are MANY other examples of opensource projects run by companies, other people mentioned MySQL, but there is also ghostscript, cups, LLVM, OpenOffice.org that I can think of off the top of my head. Apple sponsers quite a few different projects.
I define FOSS as Free and Open Source Software, as usual. See http://fsfe.org/about/basics/freesoftware.en.html
Ubuntu doesn't qualify because of software one couldn't modify.
what software in Ubuntu are you not allowed to modify?
The examples that I recognise on that list don't have their own not-for-profit host corporations, but they are brilliant! MySQL I covered in another email, as it ends up with founders forking into a Swiss not-for-profit. ghostscript has definitely moved around between FOSS (GPL) and non-FOSS (AFPL) versions over time. OpenOffice.org is currently having a forking good time: let's wait and see how it ends.
If anyone posts more, I'm not going to continue pointing out that these aren't projects with their own not-for-profit host corporations.
if you are looking for a opensource product with a not-for-profit corp and a for-profit corp involved, mozilla is a huge example (although I assume you will claim that firefox is not free software due to the fact that you can't change it and keep the branding the same) David Lang
david@lang.hm wrote:
what software in Ubuntu are you not allowed to modify?
Please ask on an FSF or FSFE list. It's off-topic here.
if you are looking for a opensource product with a not-for-profit corp and a for-profit corp involved, mozilla is a huge example (although I assume you will claim that firefox is not free software due to the fact that you can't change it and keep the branding the same)
I think Mozilla is different to the 40%-LibLime KSF in three ways: 1. Mozilla Corporation has no special rights to seats on the Mozilla Foundation board, as far as I read in its bylaws; 2. as you correctly guess, firefox is not free software because of the copyright licence of some files, which is why there's icecat & co; 3. Mozilla Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation - if PTFS is willing to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koha Software Foundation, then definitely let's get talking! How about it, PTFS? ;-) Hope that explains, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. Past Koha Release Manager (2.0), LMS programmer, statistician, webmaster. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire for Koha work http://www.software.coop/products/koha
On Fri, 15 Oct 2010, MJ Ray wrote:
david@lang.hm wrote:
what software in Ubuntu are you not allowed to modify?
Please ask on an FSF or FSFE list. It's off-topic here.
you are the one making the claim that the software shipped with Ubuntu is not allowed to be modified.
if you are looking for a opensource product with a not-for-profit corp and a for-profit corp involved, mozilla is a huge example (although I assume you will claim that firefox is not free software due to the fact that you can't change it and keep the branding the same)
I think Mozilla is different to the 40%-LibLime KSF in three ways:
1. Mozilla Corporation has no special rights to seats on the Mozilla Foundation board, as far as I read in its bylaws;
2. as you correctly guess, firefox is not free software because of the copyright licence of some files, which is why there's icecat & co;
it's not copyright license on the files, it's thr trademark enforcement. In that case, I believe that you don't want Koha to be free software, because you don't want people to be able to claim something is Koha that you consider detrimental to the reputation of Koha. there is nothing in the FSF definition that conflicts with the trademark issue. If that were the case, there isn't much of any significant software that would be considered free enough (including the linux kernel) David Lang
David, Richard Stallman spoke in Sydney on Monday night and made exactly that point. He pointed to a couple of GNU Linux distros that do meet the free software definition. Ubuntu and the other major distros all do not - each contains at least a small proportion of code where source is not available. But as MJ says, we're off topic here. Regards, Bob Birchall Calyx
you are the one making the claim that the software shipped with Ubuntu is not allowed to be modified.
david@lang.hm wrote:
On Fri, 15 Oct 2010, MJ Ray wrote:
david@lang.hm wrote:
what software in Ubuntu are you not allowed to modify?
Please ask on an FSF or FSFE list. It's off-topic here.
you are the one making the claim that the software shipped with Ubuntu is not allowed to be modified.
And that has nothing to do with its topicality. There is such software. In general, see http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/licensing but an FSF or FSFE list will have people far better on the specifics.
2. as you correctly guess, firefox is not free software because of the copyright licence of some files, which is why there's icecat & co;
it's not copyright license on the files, it's thr trademark enforcement.
Apparently I'm out of date, but I don't remember a trademark problem. http://glandium.org/blog/?p=1032 says it was "due to copyright issues" although it also says it's been solved recently which is good news that I didn't know, although the devil may be in the detail.
In that case, I believe that you don't want Koha to be free software, [...]
Please don't write silly and insulting things. I want Koha to be free software, both now and in the future, which is why having (a) robust host corp(s) rather than a company sockpuppet matters so much to me. I'm disappointed that the suggestion of a Moz-Corp-style KSF-owned PTFS was cut without comment ;-) -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. Past Koha Release Manager (2.0), LMS programmer, statistician, webmaster. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire for Koha work http://www.software.coop/products/koha
Le 15/10/2010 02:23, david@lang.hm a écrit :
On Fri, 15 Oct 2010, MJ Ray wrote
david@lang.hm wrote:
what software in Ubuntu are you not allowed to modify?
Please ask on an FSF or FSFE list. It's off-topic here.
you are the one making the claim that the software shipped with Ubuntu is not allowed to be modified.
Not "the software", but "at least one of the softwares shipped with Ubuntu is not allowed to be modified". I use Ubuntu, with at least 2 non free software : nvidia drivers, and skype. shame on me, but MJ is 100% right here. ( and it's still off-topic ;-) )
I think Mozilla is different to the 40%-LibLime KSF in three ways:
What seems unacceptable to me is the 40% = we are, like most FLOSS, meritocracy driven. And ptfs is far far far from having 40% of the merits. Important note : the meritocracy is not related to COMPANIES, it's usually related to INDIVIDUALS. At OpenWorldForum last week, I was at a conference by Eclipse foundation : the bylaws are clear = only individuals have a voice. No companies.
I prefer the individual choice, from far. and ptfs is far from having ppl with so much merit. Look at commits, druth & jane are smart ppl, but obviously not key people (no offense here, I really appreciate them, as every devs) In history, no one from ptfs has had a key responsability: Release Manager, Release Maintainer, Translation Manager, Doc Manager, ... Ppl that used to be LL employees took such responsabilities, but they are no more at LL or involved in the community. So, definetly, giving 40% to ptfs in a foundation seems impossible to me (should I say silly, crazy, un-understandable? I don't want to offend anyone with a frenchism, but you've got the idea : i'm strongly against) -- Paul POULAIN http://www.biblibre.com Expert en Logiciels Libres pour l'info-doc Tel : (33) 4 91 81 35 08
--- On Thu, 10/14/10, MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> wrote:
I've posted a brief outline or summation of LibLime's ideas about a Koha Software Foundation on the wiki -- we seek your comments -- http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Forming_a_Koha_Foundation#United_States
Please let me know if there is a more logical place to
wiki - under Forming a Foundation / Locations for an Independent Koha Organisation/ United States seemed to fit the flow in
From: MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> Subject: Re: [Koha] Fwd: LibLime ideas on a Koha Software Foundation To: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Date: Thursday, October 14, 2010, 12:30 PM DeGroff, Amy wrote: place these on the place but I am happy
to cross post or move if it will help.
A foundation 40%-controlled by Liblime doesn't seem independent to me, so I feel it should be moved, but I can't think of how to name where it should go. Does a vendor tie seem in keeping with a FOSS project host corporation to anyone?
In general, I don't think a vendor tie is necessarily against keeping with FOSS values. Many successful Open Source products have significant vendor ties. MySQL is a prime example.
I've added a comment to re-explain the difference between a foundation and an association.
I'll ignore the "intellectual assets" as that's against community policy. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#IntellectualProperty
Agreeing to any permanent representation on the board would open a can of worms because I expect all 30 or so current vendors would like something similar and several were giving to this project community before LibLime even launched.
Well, yes and no. LibLime did launch after a lot of development took place, but they also acquired the assets relating to Koha from the initial developers as I understand it.
It's hard to measure how much, because I'm sure we've seen patches committed under the wrong author's byline. It would be a bit odd to give permanent credit for "standing" only to one company that bought the 2005-9 LibLime business, wouldn't it?
No. Not at all. If they legally acquired the assets, they have acquired the assets and should have the same rights afforded to them as if they were the same entity/people that developed them. The question to me is more what that means in terms of rights, guarantees, etc. in any new Koha organization. Should any entity that has contributed code or other intellectual property have some sort of guarantees? I don't know the answer. However if the answer is yes, then PTFS/LibLime has a legitimate claim here.
So I feel like PTFS's basic preconditions are obviously unworkable and this means we're at a more obvious and clear deadlock. Can anyone explain what I've missed and why I'm wrong?
I don't know if they are obviously unworkable or not because I do not know what PTFS would say to an alternative proposal that they felt might reasonably protect their interests. I also don't know if the community as a whole would agree to an alternative. Without rehashing the details I think it is fair to say both PTFS and large portions of the Koha community each have reasons to be skeptical of each other. Arguing who is at fault would make any attempt to cross this divide even less likely to succeed then it is now. Personally, I wouldn't mind if a few key entities/persons got some level of guaranteed seats at the table for a limited time period. I am not sure what percentage of the board (or what ever it is) that should be nor how it should be divided. As I said, I don't know if PTFS would agree to such an alternative proposal, but my gut feeling is if they don't have at least an initial seat, they would be unlikely to relinquish the assets they control. This might be unfortunate and not what a significant portion of the community would prefer, but I think it is reality. If what I suspect of PTFS is true and the community doesn't want to meet them at some point in the middle (or if PTFS is unwilling to accept a compromise), I fear that Thomas Krichel is correct when he says "the whole thing will not be over until the community changes the name of the software and gets another domain for it." Cheers, Edward
Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. Past Koha Release Manager (2.0), LMS programmer, statistician, webmaster. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire for Koha work http://www.software.coop/products/koha _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list http://koha-community.org Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
ed c wrote:
--- On Thu, 10/14/10, MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> wrote: [...]
Does a vendor tie seem in keeping with a FOSS project host corporation to anyone?
In general, I don't think a vendor tie is necessarily against keeping with FOSS values. Many successful Open Source products have significant vendor ties. MySQL is a prime example.
As with the examples in the other email, MySQL has not got its own project host corporation. However, the buying and selling of MySQL's producers is quite an enlightening case study. At one point, MySQL founder Monty Widenius raised a petition of over 50,000 developers and users against the Oracle purchase. The story has resulted in MariaDB, hosted by the Open Database Alliance, a vendor-neutral consortium of open source database developers and solution providers. I think MySQL is a great example of what we should try to avoid and skip ahead to a vendor-neutral organisation. Learning from others' mistakes is even better than learning from one's own. [...]
Agreeing to any permanent representation on the board would open a can of worms because I expect all 30 or so current vendors would like something similar and several were giving to this project community before LibLime even launched.
Well, yes and no. LibLime did launch after a lot of development took place, but they also acquired the assets relating to Koha from the initial developers as I understand it.
Please, I beg you, generally ignore the "assets" argument. Like "property" it is a red herring, a word to avoid when discussing software.
It's hard to measure how much, because I'm sure we've seen patches committed under the wrong author's byline. It would be a bit odd to give permanent credit for "standing" only to one company that bought the 2005-9 LibLime business, wouldn't it?
No. Not at all. If they legally acquired the assets, they have acquired the assets and should have the same rights afforded to them as if they were the same entity/people that developed them.
Well, I asked everyone to ignore the "assets" word to avoid, but if you insist, let's examine them: "The acquisition involves the transfer of staff from Katipo to LibLime, including the original author of Koha, Chris Cormack. Assets involved in the acquisition include existing support contracts with libraries that contracted with Katipo for support of Koha; copyrights and trademarks related to Koha; and the koha.org domain." http://www.librarytechnology.org/ltg-displaytext.pl?RC=12738 First, I'm pretty sure that the people ("staff"!) who transferred then no longer work for LibLime now. As well as the people being different, the entity has changed too. MetaVore's LibLime is now PTFS's LibLime. The support contracts I'm not sure about, but they have their own reward. The copyrights have been diluted as LibLime withdrew into LEK and so on, and other companies stepped up to contribute to real Koha. They're also licensed under GPL2+, so we don't need to acquire them. The trademarks were only a subset anyway. And the domain... this mailing list has seen how that was mishandled. I feel that a reasonable judge would regard whatever goodwill MetaVore bought as exhausted long ago. Even the non-compete of the seller only lasted something like two years and Katipo are back involved commercially once again. So, what exactly still remains of the purchase? Just the domain? Plus the other ones listed in http://lists.katipo.co.nz/pipermail/koha/2010-September/025238.html which PTFS appears to be squatting on. 40% control is too steep a price for a ten-quid domain, isn't it?
The question to me is more what that means in terms of rights, guarantees, etc. in any new Koha organization. Should any entity that has contributed code or other intellectual property have some sort of guarantees? I don't know the answer. However if the answer is yes, then PTFS/LibLime has a legitimate claim here.
No, no guarantees. A person doesn't get to contribute something and then lay claim to it still. That's not how gift economies (and koha means gift, after all) usually work. [...]
Personally, I wouldn't mind if a few key entities/persons got some level of guaranteed seats at the table for a limited time period. [...] As I said, I don't know if PTFS would agree to such an alternative proposal, but my gut feeling is if they don't have at least an initial seat, they would be unlikely to relinquish the assets they control. This might be unfortunate and not what a significant portion of the community would prefer, but I think it is reality. If what I suspect of PTFS is true and the community doesn't want to meet them at some point in the middle (or if PTFS is unwilling to accept a compromise), I fear that Thomas Krichel is correct when he says "the whole thing will not be over until the community changes the name of the software and gets another domain for it."
We shouldn't change. Koha is our project and a lot of us have spent a lot of time and resources building it and our community. One recent entrant buying another slightly less recent entrant should not force earlier participants out of the home we've all built. PTFS should change the name of their forked community - they've already a new logo. I'm glad that we seem to agree on one thing though: maybe "a limited time period" or "an initial seat" we should discuss. A bloc of seats forever is far too much. A foundation - with perpetual special rights for founder(s) - doesn't make sense for this project. Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. Past Koha Release Manager (2.0), LMS programmer, statistician, webmaster. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire for Koha work http://www.software.coop/products/koha
participants (7)
-
Bob Birchall ＠ Calyx -
david＠lang.hm -
DeGroff, Amy -
ed c -
MJ Ray -
Paul Poulain -
Thomas Krichel