Hi All -- Greetings from ByWater Solutions! I hope everyone had a great weekend and mother’s day. I love the passion I have seen on this post over the past few days. Although we are relatively new in the community we are completely dedicated to Koha and wanted to weigh in on the conversation. In regards to the pay-for-support listing page; I vote that the companies be listed by location, which can either be implemented by a linkable map or just listed by region. However, I also truly believe that this should not be solely decided by the vendors and developers of Koha, but by the users as well. They are the ones whom are going through the arduous task of deciding which company, if any, to choose to lead them through the task of migrating to a new ILS. Another reason for this belief is that as per human nature, whomever controls that page will have self (company)- interest in mind, whether intended or not. I also have a question about the Koha-manage list. What are the qualifications to be on this list? I've sent several requests to join, to no avail, and I have never received an answer as to why? My company is listed as a pay-for-support option and we are heavily invested in supporting the community. To me, having exclusivity to a list where many of the decisions being made for the community are done seems against the whole community/ open-source ideal. For example, the discussion of how to list the pay-for-support companies was completed and decided on that chain and then changed on the community koha.org website. The escalation surrounding this issue may have been prevented if all of the members in the community, some of whom this directly affected, were allowed to be part of the discussion. I think many of us in the Koha community will be interested to see if any of these discussions, suggestions and ideas actually yield any results. As of right now it seems to be self-serving, as we have yet to see any changes. Every community feels growing pains when it comes to evolution and change, but only the successful ones foster open discussion, hold each member in esteem, and have leaders who can chose the path of humility when change is needed. I sincerely hope we can take that path and look back at the issues we have now, and will have in the future, as inevitable speed bumps on the road to success. ByWater Solutions has not yet had the opportunity to contribute major developments or groundbreaking answers to problems in the community, but I hope my comments will still be taken seriously regardless. Thanks, merci, gracias, tēnā rawa atu koutou. -Brendan --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brendan A. Gallagher ByWater Solutions CEO, Director of Innovation Support and Consulting for Open Source Software Installation, Data Migration, Training, Customization, Hosting, Complete Support Packages Headquarters: Santa Barbara, CA - Office: West Haven, CT Phone # (203)823-5847 http://bywatersolutions.com info@bywatersolutions.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brendan Gallagher <info@bywatersolutions.com> wrote:
Greetings from ByWater Solutions! I hope everyone had a great weekend and mother’s day. I love the passion I have seen on this post over
Well, it was a good weekend, but Mothers' day hereabouts was months ago...
In regards to the pay-for-support listing page; I vote that the companies be listed by location, which can either be implemented by a linkable map or just listed by region. However, I also truly believe that this should not be solely decided by the vendors and developers of Koha, but by the users as well. [...]
I think a user-sortable list is the best way, with some sort of "by distance" initialised by crude geo-IP detection as the default. What's the point of having Plone there if we can't make this dynamic?
I also have a question about the Koha-manage list. What are the qualifications to be on this list?
As I wrote to someone else (Eric?), the list is past post-holders plus invitees at the moment. Not great, but reasonably understanable.
I've sent several requests to join, to no avail, and I have never received an answer as to why?
I think my "vote" was 0 = abstain, with a suggestion that Brendan be invited in a few months because I'd not interacted with Bywater much then. I don't know why this wasn't sent as an answer.
[...] To me, having exclusivity to a list where many of the decisions being made for the community are done seems against the whole community/ open-source ideal.
Whoa! Very few decisions are made there. I think it started off as a list to develop a proposal about the foundation and discuss some confidential matters affecting the Koha companies on that list. Community ideal perhaps, but if we look at open source, it is littered with similar self-perpetuating by-invitation groups - we should do better.
For example, the discussion of how to list the pay-for-support companies was completed and decided on that chain and then changed on the community koha.org website.
Whoa! The discussion was not completed and the decision was taken by LibLime, as recent posts should have suggested. That said, I'm not sure why it was on koha-manage only.
The escalation surrounding this issue may have been prevented if all of the members in the community, some of whom this directly affected, were allowed to be part of the discussion. I think many of us in the Koha community will be interested to see if any of these discussions, suggestions and ideas actually yield any results. [...]
Yeah, given the speed with which the website changed over, it's rather disappointing to see no movement on this yet. Guess that teaches us where we stand, huh? Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef). LMS developer and supporter for a small, friendly worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ (Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237
participants (2)
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Brendan Gallagher -
MJ Ray