[Koha] Koha demo links on koha.org

[MJ Ray]

Ben Ide asked:
> [...] How is LibLime's actions different from those of
> software.coop, the work done for the Learning Access Institute, and
> HTL?

Well, with software.coop, I think the main differences are that:

1. LibLime (17 developers in Koha git log up to rel_3_0) seems much
bigger than software.coop (5 members, of which 3 have touched Koha
so far because we're trying to grow sustainably);

2. LEK appears to be from choice, rather than from any other community
member backing them into it.

I've been quite clear about two things about our fork:-

1. the software.coop fork occurred primarily because of enthusiastic
adoption of non-essential new upstream library features which didn't
work on some of our platforms in the time we needed it.  When I
started to work around that problem, a LibLime developer stated
outright that "Nobody else wants to do this, and for good reason,
since performance will suffer greatly".  (It didn't FWIW.)  So,
mainline Koha wasn't going to work for us.  What choice did the
community give us?  It seemed like a clear "fork or quit" situation
that you put us in.

2. we have been reconciling our fork with the koha.org releases and I
have promised to push anything significant (probably to gitorious I
think) as soon as I get spare worker time.  We will not be throwing it
over the wall in a "contribution phase of development [at] the end of
the cycle".  A little stuff has already appeared in patches and we've
tried to contribute otherwise too.

In short, we do not expect to externalise the cost of our fork to the
community.  If anyone wants to pay us to merge, that would be great,
but I don't expect it.

So please stop attacking us: "concern for community" is one of our
business's basic principles, so you know we'll come good.  I think
we're also the only for-service (rather than for-profit) vendor.

I agree that it's pretty certain that some other Koha developers have
private forks which they haven't been this open about and haven't yet
promised to reconcile (some have, which I applaud).  It would be good
if their Koha users held them to account and at least got a similar
contribution promise from them to that which I've made and which some
others have done/started.

[...]
> > It is my humble opinion that your organization could very possibly be
> > in the best position to make such a valuable contribution to this
> > community.
> 
> Thank you.  But as it's been said before, corporations have the right
> to profit and programmers have the right to get paid.

So what does that mean?  You won't help get a similar promise?

Also, I don't know who said that, but I feel they're wrong.
Programmers have the right to get paid a living wage, but corporations
have no *right* to profit from community resources any more than
librarians have a right to sell their community's books and keep the
money.

> 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.  Afterwards, when you're writing it, it
> seems like a decent tool for dissemination, but before you're done it
> seems really cumbersome.  Is there something I'm missing?

Some GUI tools and git stash, perhaps?

Hope that explains,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)  LMS developer and webmaster at     | software
www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk        |  .... co
IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html |  .... op