Waylon Robertson <wrobertson1981@yahoo.co.nz> wrote:

What....... how... who.... what madness is this? Did they even look at Koha? NZ, the birthplace of Koha... has, at a national level, rejected Koha? Or did they not know about Koha? Koha wasn't good enough for them?..... I feel ... like using lots of strong words.

Did the National Library of NZ use a procurement process? Our co-op has no-one in that timezone at the moment, so we wouldn't have been watching. Anyone here (supplier or librarian) see it? Did it disadvantage Koha in some way? That might have been by structuring the purchase in a way which favours all-in-one "black box" LMSes rather than combinations of FOSS projects, using a specification drafted by legacy LMS suppliers, by not taking into account the exit cost of migrating away from a closed non-standard LMS at the end of its contract period, or by requiring suppliers to take some legal form which no Koha supplier currently uses. Those are some of the reasons I often think procurement processes are broken. Our public services often pay over the odds to reward private suppliers for gambling relatively large sums on playing nonsensical bidding games. Worse, there's often fairly large spending by the public service to run the game and answer the inevitable questions about it. I suspect fairly few social enterprises play if they have alternative sources of income. I feel libraries seem a bit short-sighted on this sort of thing. Each extra dollar a supplier spends to win business (on procurement processes, on expensive trade fairs run by so-called professional bodies that are slowly becoming private enterprises, on glossy brochures and sweatshop-made plastic promotional products mailed out to libraries, ...) is an extra dollar which some library must be charged, plus administration cost. If you'd like the biggest bang-per-buck, please reward suppliers who spend their marketing money in ethical ways that also support libraries or public communities. Look at a trade fair stand and ask: what use is that to anyone? Look at free gifts and ask: who does this help? What is its point? </rant> ;-) Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. http://koha-community.org supporter, web and LMS developer, statistician. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire for Koha work http://www.software.coop/products/koha

Paul POULAIN wrote:

Le 03/05/2011 12:09, MJ Ray a écrit :

...

Did the National Library of NZ use a procurement process?

iirc, Dan Christie, Catalyst director (Chris C. employer) spoke of this during KohaCon. iirc, he said it was hard to convince OpenSource was a possibility. that's all I remember, i've forgotten the details (but i'm not surprised by this news, it was implied when I heard don speaking of that)

Chris Cormack passed me the link http://www.dgmarket.com/tenders/np-notice.do~5329124 which doesn't work for me (no cookies until you show me a privacy policy, nasty error page) but might contain information. http://bywatersolutions.com/2010/10/26/kohacon10-promoting-free-softare-in-l... is Nicole's blog post about Don's talk but I'm not sure I see the above comments reflected in that. Here's an interesting question from #koha - when should suppliers protest about defective procurement processes? I think it's best done while the process is still open (so there is still some chance it could be suspended and relaunched) but others said it's better to bid first, complain later. Any procurement experts here? Thanks, -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. http://koha-community.org supporter, web and LMS developer, statistician. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire for Koha work http://www.software.coop/products/koha

I recommend making sure your library hires a consultant who knows how to navigate procurement waters in an OSS and a proprietary environment. ;) Seriously, there are only a couple of us out there and hiring the wrong consultant can kill your OSS options. I've seen it happen many times. Lori Sent from my iPhone 4 On May 3, 2011, at 11:59 AM, Lee Phillips <lphillips@buttepubliclibrary.info> wrote:

Greetings to all my Koha pals, esp. MJ and Paul!!! As a library admin person I had put together the criteria for RFPs for our ILS search. Of course I already knew about Koha and Evergreen, so I could add specifications in the RFP that only FOSS could meet. Is that fair? Yes I believe it is. MJ is right the lack of technical expertise on the part of procurement leads to the path of least resistance for the support staff who prefer someone else to blame when things don't work, instead of learning, contributing and evolving. I think this would be an EXCELLENT topic for a presentation at KohaCon-" How to write a RFP that is vendor/ FOSS neutral". I was able to decide what was best for my library and ask the vendors to meet that expectation. The question that ALWAYS favors FOSS is "Do I control my records and will it cost me to retrieve them if I move to another vendor?" I am unaware of any option other than FOSS that can answer that question in the affirmative. As a public librarian it is imperative for me to control the data. Or NO deal. And MJ, you are so right about all "free crap" passed out at conferences by vendors"made in China" or a 3rd world country...etc... I am most proud of my FOSS stickers on my netbook cover from KohaCon 10. Almost as good as a tattoo! Cheers all Lee Phillips Butte Public Library Butte MT

On 5/3/2011 8:36 AM, MJ Ray wrote:

...

...

...

Did the National Library of NZ use a procurement process? iirc, Dan Christie, Catalyst director (Chris C. employer) spoke of this during KohaCon. iirc, he said it was hard to convince OpenSource was a

Le 03/05/2011 12:09, MJ Ray a écrit : possibility. that's all I remember, i've forgotten the details (but i'm not surprised by this news, it was implied when I heard don speaking of that) Chris Cormack passed me the link http://www.dgmarket.com/tenders/np-notice.do~5329124 which doesn't work for me (no cookies until you show me a privacy

Paul POULAIN wrote: policy, nasty error page) but might contain information.

http://bywatersolutions.com/2010/10/26/kohacon10-promoting-free-softare-in-l... is Nicole's blog post about Don's talk but I'm not sure I see the above comments reflected in that.

Here's an interesting question from #koha - when should suppliers protest about defective procurement processes? I think it's best done while the process is still open (so there is still some chance it could be suspended and relaunched) but others said it's better to bid first, complain later. Any procurement experts here?

Thanks,

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