[Koha] Community Feedback

[rafael.antonio at sapo.pt]

Dear all,
It is a mistake to think about "free beer" and not "free speech".
Koha is so complete that we must understand that to intall and  
customize it there are only two ways: ourself or someone that knows it.
But with comercial software we have the same problem because we pay  
the license plus customization.
If we choose Koha we have open souce wich can be adjusted. Otherwise  
we pay and wait always for a new release.
Koha is so open that a lot of developments can be done with it. But to  
be stronger a large community is needed to cooperate and share such  
developments.
After some years and with 3.0 I see such growing (emails keep being  
sent) that it can be spread around world.
We is Portugal have a difficult mission because  a large majority is  
already using some commercial  software but I am trying to be an  
evangelist and creating a Koha community. If it succeeds sometime we  
help for free but other  times we do some consultation on Library  
management and we are paid.
Regards,
Rafael António





Citando paul POULAIN <paul.poulain at biblibre.com>:

> Joe Atzberger a écrit :
>>
>>     I don't think it accurate to say that there are many people
>>     working on Koha for free.
>>
>>
>> Indeed, these stats bear that out:
>> http://www.ohloh.net/p/1541/contributors
>>
>
> interesting stat, that proves the multiple origin of Koha :
> - me, laurenthdl & toins (BibLibre)
> - chris C (previously katipo, now catalyst)
> - owen (NPL)
> - kados, galen, atz, rych (LibLime)
> - acli
> - many others
>
> In fact, if i'm not mistaken, the 2nd interesting point in this list is
> that the only contributors that were not support companies are : owen
> (and he's a unique case I think), acli, steve tonnesen, and wolfpack444
> Apologizes if I'm wrong, but none of them (except owen, of course) are
> still active for years.
> I'm sure that, to the -notable- exception of owen, for 3 years, the 10
> first committers are LibLimers and BibLibreros[*] ! (/me dunno how to
> count chris C., as he has been a liblimer partially during this period)
>
> We see here a change in Koha model. You can think/find it's a shame, but
> I think that Koha is now too complex (from a functionnal point of view)
> to have ppl involved on a "spare time" contribution basis.
>
> Learning koha internals + librarian terms + zebra + ... is not a small
> thing !
>
>
> [*] ppl from BibLibre. BibLibre is hard enough to pronounce, BibLibrers
> is impossible ;-) so, we've choosen to be BibLibreros :D
>
> --
> 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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