Paul wrote:

* PTFS/LibLime has a "Harley" release of Koha, that is OpenSource, patches have been submitted, I think 50% of them are now in Koha. But it is not Koha and unless i'm mistaking, it does not evolve (and is based on 3.0.2 version of Koha).

To elaborate, Harley is open source in the sense that you can download it in the form it was released in May 2010. But as Paul says, no one is maintaining an evolving public repository for Harley. No patches are being submitted, no changes are appearing to the version you can find on LibLime's web site. I've been helping develop Koha for almost ten years now. My library has used Koha since 2003 and was a Liblime customer or part of that time. I can say without hesitation: Use the official version of Koha at http://www.koha-community.org. That's where the community is. And you want to be where the community is! -- Owen -- Web Developer Athens County Public Libraries http://www.myacpl.org

Speaking for myself (not the entire KUDOScon planning committee), I would love for this to be a topic of discussion at the KUDOScon in May. http://kudos.koha-community.org/kudoscon2011/ 2011/2/17 Ian Walls <ian.walls@bywatersolutions.com>

Thanks, Paul, for providing a good clear history.

A little bit more: the Harley code is based off Koha 3.01.00.061, which is a little over a year old. As far as I know, it was a one-time release; there have not been new fixes added to the repository. The new features it added are broken out onto topic branches, but in my working with them, I've found them not to be atomic; that is, new feature 13 depends on new features 1-12. This makes it really hard to get them integrated, but progress is being made! Check out http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/PTFSHarleyIntegration

I hope that we will continue to make progress on this, so we can get a solid upgrade path to Koha for those folks currently using Harley. Some features may be implemented different ways in Koha, but if we can get most of the good ideas integrated, libraries will have more options.

I've got nothing worthwhile to say about LibLime Enterprise Koha, since I can't work with the code. I hope that it will someday be released, as promised when the announcement was made back on '09, but either way, it doesn't affect my plan to keep working on making Koha better and better.

Tom, hope this helped at least a little. If you've got some time in May, you could swing by the KUDOS conference in Madison, WI, and talk with other US Koha users, of all varieties. They'd be able to give you perspective I cannot (since I work for one of the Koha support companies in the US, ByWater Solutions).

Cheers,

-Ian

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Paul Poulain <paul.poulain@biblibre.com>wrote:

...

Le 17/02/2011 15:34, Tom Hanstra a écrit :

...

I hope I'm not kicking a hornet's nest here. I'm just trying to get a handle on how compatible these are and how to decide which version might best meet our local needs. Definetly, and without any doubt : the koha-community version. Definetly yes it's a hornet nest. So I'll try to answer clearly and without awakening sleeping hornets ;-)

Just to be clear : I'm Paul Poulain, from France, served as Release Manager for Koha 2.0 and 2.2. I've founded BibLibre in France 3 years ago. I have nothing against PTFS/LL but I think their strategy won't be successfull. I think Koha project loosed many time with those problems, but it's behind us now.

A small history history : * at the beginning (2000), koha.org was managed by katipo, where chris C. and some other were working (katipo was the Koha v1 author) * in 2007, LibLime bought koha.org, the katipo Koha dev team and katipo New Zealand customers * one year later, the katipo-now-LL ppl resigned from LL * in 2008 PTFS started his involvement in Koha. They were coldly welcomed by the community & LibLime (LL & PTFS are operating in US) They sended some patches but were considered as a wolf in a sheepfold, so patches were included, but always with a cold welcome. Note the technical relationships have always be better than the strategic relationships. * in 2009, some/many devs from LL resigned as well and, in sept, 11th LL announced LLEK, a hosted version that is not OpenSource because the source is not distributed (reminder : koha.org is "owned" by LL...) * in late 2009, early 2010, PTFS bought LL * in early 2010, the koha community (ie : everybody except LL & PTFS) decided to move to http://www.koha-community.org because we had no control & easy access over the content of the other website. All developers tools were also moved for the same reason.

So, as of today : * PTFS/LibLime has a LLEK software that is not Koha, and you can't download * PTFS/LibLime has a "Harley" release of Koha, that is OpenSource, patches have been submitted, I think 50% of them are now in Koha. But it is not Koha and unless i'm mistaking, it does not evolve (and is based on 3.0.2 version of Koha). The remaining 50% may be included in Koha, or replaced by someone else dev that achieve the same goal. * Koha-community.org has the "uptodate" version of "the community".

Hoping I answered you questions.

-- Paul POULAIN http://www.biblibre.com Expert en Logiciels Libres pour l'info-doc Tel : (33) 4 91 81 35 08

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