[Koha] RE LibLime Thoughts

[Don]

Hi

As the director of a company that supports and develops many FLOSS
products, including Koha and as the President of the New Zealand Open
Source Society, I would just like to make a few points on this topic.

Koha is a project that was started by a very small community in New
Zealand. That community donated Koha, a gift, to the world. That the
world wide community has been able to extend Koha fantastically,
organise itself and sustain itself is testament to the vision and ideals
that were behind the original gift.

Indeed, for potential users of Koha the community strength and
resilience should be a major attraction. This resilience is more
important in the medium and long term than the technology itself.

The GNU General Public Licence that Koha uses guarantees that users of
the software will always have their rights and freedoms protected and
sustained. These cannot be captured by single entities or individuals
such as Catalyst or Liblime or even the company originally developed and
still supports the technology, Katipo.

As a businessman, seeing the Koha community take such interest in their
software gives me confidence that it is a system worth supporting and
investing in. I know many other businesses round the world feel the
same. As long as there is a vibrant and demanding community of users
there will be many businesses vying to offer their support services. If
that community fades away then so will the support. 

LibLime have been, and hopefully will continue to be, a leading member
of the Koha community, but it will have to be on the community's terms,
not someone's outdated ideal of a business model.

As Kiwi I am proud of HLT, Katipo and Koha. As a businessman I am
confident in the sustainability and future of the software. 

Kia Kaha

Don

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Donald Christie (ITCP) - Director
Catalyst IT Limited 
Level 6,150-154 Willis Street, PO Box 11-053  
Wellington New Zealand
Tel:+64 4 4992267
Mob:+64 274 707814
http://catalyst.net.nz 
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