+1 Regards, Koustubha Kale Anant Corporation Contact Details : Address : 103, Armaan Residency, R. W Sawant Road, Nr. Golden Dyes Naka, Thane (w), Maharashtra, India, Pin : 400601. TeleFax : +91-22-21720108, +91-22-21720109 Mobile : +919820715876 Website : http://www.anantcorp.com Blog : http://www.anantcorp.com/blog/?author=2 On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 11:48 PM, MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> wrote:

Liz Rea wrote:

...

http://koha-community.org/support/paid-support/how-to-get-listed/ [...] Entries will be added if they represent a current proffer of Koha services. Entries that are obviously spam (i.e., not relevant to Koha services) will not be accepted.

From time to time, the Koha webmasters may check vendors to see if they currently offer services. If a company no longer does, their entry may be removed. All removals will be posted publicly to the Koha mailing list. [...] These guidelines were adopted at the 5 May 2010 IRC meeting. Notes from the meeting can be found at http://stats.workbuffer.org/irclog/koha/2010-05-05#i_434509.

Can we add a solidarity clause? Do we want to list support providers who are actively attacking our community through domain names, trademarks and legal actions? That sort of community-splitting tactic should have no place in the project, IMO.

I move that any such providers should be suspended from the listing until they cease legal actions against other providers and offer domains and marks to the community in a FOSS-compatible way.

Furthermore, I suggest that the vendors' site must link back to the community site, else their entry may be removed.

I'm in no hurry about the link back, but the actions, domains and marks requirement seems pretty important.

Comments?

Thanks, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster and LMS developer at | software www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk | .... co IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html | .... op _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 6:18 AM, MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> wrote:

Can we add a solidarity clause?  Do we want to list support providers

There was a bit of discussion on this point in the IRC mtg. The consensus resolved to something like "it's difficult and distracting to make and maintain and enforce a reliable test of goodness so instead just keep it clean and simple" plus "oh, and maybe we'll also add a Cool Vendors Do This check list to appear on the directly page as well" -- the energy would be better spent updating docs or making patches or watching tv or something -reed

Reed Wade wrote:

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 6:18 AM, MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> wrote:

...

Can we add a solidarity clause?  Do we want to list support providers

There was a bit of discussion on this point in the IRC mtg. The consensus resolved to something like "it's difficult and distracting to make and maintain and enforce a reliable test of goodness so instead just keep it clean and simple"

I didn't find it on http://stats.workbuffer.org/irclog/koha/2010-05-04 and I don't understand the reasons for that consensus. Sorting this out correctly once seems much less distracting than leaving it fuzzy and having the sort of problems we had under LibLime's rule, while my proposed solidarity clause seems pretty clean and simple to me.

plus "oh, and maybe we'll also add a Cool Vendors Do This check list to appear on the directly page as well"

Would librarians involved in purchasing like to comment on how many they think would actually use such a checklist as part of choosing a support provider? If it'd work, great, but I have my doubts that it is compatible with Best Value and similar purchasing rules, so it is better for the community to limit listing to those in good standing.

the energy would be better spent updating docs or making patches or watching tv or something

No, not really. This is a bang per buck thing: we should invest this bit of energy to free up a lot of vendor energy for the community. If our community directs paid work towards vendors who are working against it, then those who play nice will not achieve their potential and the community will benefit less than it could. We're effectively working against ourselves if we help those who work against us. Hope that explains, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster and LMS developer at | software www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk | .... co IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html | .... op

Hi, On May 10, 2010, at 10:24 AM, Ian Walls wrote:

If I may offer a third position for discussion: what if the community were to define a discrete list of potential Koha services that a company can offer to be listed? For example: [snip] By making these services clear and descriptive (and still all verifiable), we can give interested parties the world over a more complete picture of what each company is offering, and allow them to make their own judgement on how well that company can support their needs. Listing a company is still a matter of checking facts, just a more fine-grained set of them.

This would overcomplicate the listing process, in my opinion, and put the community back into the business of analyzing each request to verify detailed claims. Such verification could in turn amount to an implied endorsement of each vendor listing, which I would argue is outside the scope of the vendor directory. The current format of company name, contact information, and a brief statement of services offered is sufficient; if a vendor wants to provide a detailed breakdown of their services, they can do so on their own website. This is not to say that it wouldn't be a useful exercise for a disinterested party to put together a matrix of specific services offered by each vendor, but that should be outside the scope of the vendor listing on the main website. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton VP, Data Services Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source email: gmc@esilibrary.com direct: +1 352-215-7548 skype: gmcharlt web: http://www.esilibrary.com/

Ian Walls wrote: [...]

The current proposal is for our Support Companies page to list *every company claiming (with some level of verifiability) to offer Koha services*. Thus, the purpose of the page is to simply be a list of all the potential possibilities for a Koha support company, with no quality judgement of any kind placed on the companies. Getting listed only requires the verification of a simple fact.

The difficulty comes with the possibility of a company offering Koha services that are not in the spirit of the community. [...]

This is much simpler than looking for services "in the spirit". It is a verifiable fact whether a company owns a domain or trademark, it is a verifiable fact whether that has been offered to HLT or another community group to manage and it is a verifiable fact whether legal proceedings over Koha have been entered and not resolved. No judge required and the informal appeals process suggested for other delistings would be fine. Please don't overreact to the LibLime approach by dismantling all quality control on the community website. This is not the old 'you are cool' test. It is a simpler, factual solidarity test. Couldn't we adopt this, please? Thanks to wizzyrea for the link to the developer meeting. I'm surprised that it was put to developers and not the community one, not that we made either of them this month (first time in a while). :-/ About 28 people were in the meeting. About 7 voted for "boil the list down to one question: does the vendor offer Koha services of any kind", 0 abstained, 0 against. Why such a low turnout? Low support or fatigue? Moreover, I think one voter had a conflict of interest because they have influence over a private koha domain. I also see that about 6 voted for link-back, 1 abstained, 1 against. Why do we seem to be adopting one-question but not link-back?

If I may offer a third position for discussion: what if the community were to define a discrete list of potential Koha services that a company can offer to be listed?

I hope that could come in technical upgrades to the listings page, but it seem independent of whether to list a company or not. Hope that explains, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster and LMS developer at | software www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk | .... co IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html | .... op

On ti, 2010-05-11 at 05:30 +1200, Chris Cormack wrote:

If we can't do that, I vote for pulling the listing from the website, and just using the wiki where people can have edit wars to their hearts content.

I suspect a listing in the wiki would be most in the community spirit anyway. However, I think a more important point in this discussion is that there's a perceived need to do "quality control" on the Koha vendors. Would it be better to do that via feedback from customers rather than pre-approval by the community? In other words, have a list of all Koha vendors, and then a mechanism via which their customers can give feedback on how satisfied they are. This could be a mailing list, a wiki page, or a, say, a yearly survey sent out to Koha users.

Chris Cormack wrote:

On 11 May 2010 05:05, MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> wrote:

...

Please don't overreact to the LibLime approach by dismantling all quality control on the community website.  This is not the old 'you are cool' test.  It is a simpler, factual solidarity test. Couldn't we adopt this, please?

I vote no, while it is a verifiable fact, some of these are not easily verifiable. Do we really want to have to search every legal database each time we list a vendor?? [...]

Where did that idea come from? No-one would "have to search". Someone would request listing and if no-one points a problem out, assume the best until told otherwise; if told otherwise, expect the person who pointed out the problem to substantiate it and the listing-requestor to rebut it. I'm not asking anyone else to search legal databases. I don't mind people arguing against the solidarity clause, but please argue against solidarity, rather than imagining extra problems.

I vote list everyone, this doesn't preclude people from pointing out when people are behaving badly, but I think the listing should have no judgement implied at all.

The listing necessarily has some judgment implied: we think X offers Koha support. I suspect that most people would expect the community view of "offers Koha support" to include not trying to disrupt Koha or its community, but I've not tested that yet. The idea of "if you can't say anything nice, say nothing" is still very common, so anyone pointing out bad behaviour also gets damaged a bit. Is anyone going to point anything but the very worst behaviour out? There aren't many people pointing out the current koha* domain names under private control, for example. Why will that change? Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster and LMS developer at | software www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk | .... co IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html | .... op

On Mon, 10 May 2010, Lenora Oftedahl wrote:

I have to agree with MJ here. This question is pretty simple. Is a company trying to take over a Koha asset for 'personal' gain? If they are, then that company is not really part of the community. Have they created a fork in the code? Then they are not part of the community.

the problem is how you define these things. Looking at Linux vendors as a parallel, You will find people who believe that Red Hat has done all of the things above. You will find others who believe that Red Hat can do nothing wrong and is the example that all other companies should aspire to, but that Connonical (the publishers of Ubuntu) are examples of pure evil. I would expect that any companies doing significant work on Koha would maintain their own fork, if for no other reason than they need a place to test their changes before they are ready to be submitted upstream. for that matter, if/when I make my own installation of Koha for my home library, I expect that I will end up maintaining my own fork for some things for at least a little while. The mere existance of a fork is not evidence of misbehavior, it's when that fork is misused that there is a problem, and that gets back into either judgement calls, or many, many detailed rules of what's acceptable. As far as taking over a Koha asset for 'personal' gain, exactly how do you tell the difference between them doing it for 'personal' gain vs honestly believeing that it's best for the community? This can be a very slippery slope, and even worse, if you have such a mechanism in place, people may end up feeling as if it has been misused, even when it hasn't been (people can mistake delays in validation because someone is busy with deliberate foot-dragging because it's a competitor for example) It may annoy you to list companies that you feel are doing the community a disservice, but you need to think very carefully about the cost of going to other way. Given that you have a wiki, you may want to list all companies in one page, but then have links to sub-pages for each company where users can add additional comments that are very clearly not the judgement of the community, but rateings of users. If you do this I would suggest that as a matter of policy, community officers refrain from posting any comments (other than a Legal officer noting the existance and providing links to the outcome of any litigation) It's not just avoiding impropriety, it's avoiding any possible appearance of impropriety. David Lang

Lenora StreamNet Regional Librarian Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission http://www.fishlib.org

...

The difficulty comes with the possibility of a company offering Koha services that are not in the spirit of the community. [...]

This is much simpler than looking for services "in the spirit". It is a verifiable fact whether a company owns a domain or trademark, it is a verifiable fact whether that has been offered to HLT or another community group to manage and it is a verifiable fact whether legal proceedings over Koha have been entered and not resolved. No judge required and the informal appeals process suggested for other delistings would be fine.

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