[Koha] Defining community participation [was: Koha demo links on koha.org]

[Owen Leonard]

> So, if LibLime promised to make all their code available after
> customer signoff, would this reduce all of this discussion to a
> footnote in Koha's history?  Because this promise has been made on
> more than one occasion.

Define "available." As we've already heard, LibLime has said that they
would not open up a public git repo. That means that the Koha
community can't interact with their developments in the way they do
with everyone else's.

As has been pointed out frequently before, making code available by
releasing a tarball just doesn't count. That's not participation.

> Actually, with perhaps two exceptions, all the discussion off that
> thread can be summed up with "Thanks. Could you use Git, please?"

In other words, "Could you return to the kind of participation you
were doing just a few months ago?"

> Let me ask a very basic question, which I think is at the heart of
> this matter.  How is LibLime's actions different from those of
> software.coop, the work done for the Learning Access Institute, and
> HTL?  All have code that, so far as I can tell, have not been released
> back to TKC,* despite open source licensing agreements.  What makes
> this stink bigger?

HLT. Horowhenua Library Trust. http://www.library.org.nz. And neither
software.coop or HLT has posted demos of non-public versions of Koha
on koha.org. Neither are advertising a non-public version of Koha
using the Koha name.

> Thank you.  But as it's been said before, corporations have the right
> to profit and programmers have the right to get paid.

It's amazing that we're still having this conversation. Who around
here isn't getting paid? All of us, not least of all LibLime, are
proof that participation--real participation--in an open source
project can be sustainable and profitable.

> I have another question that maybe someone can help me with.  I've
> been reading a bit about git and it seems like a real pain to use
> while you're developing code.

It's not. It's beneficial. LibLime knows this very well, as they use
the tool every day to support their customers. This is a non-issue for
this subject.

  -- Owen

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Athens County Public Libraries
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