[Koha] Koha (was Introduction - Sean McIntyre)

[Christopher Nighswonger]

Thanks for the thoughtful and constructive response, Sean.

On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 7:38 AM, Sean McIntyre <smcintyre at ptfs.com> wrote:
> So if I understand your first paragraph, the confusion was created when we
> made available a "flavor" for download, rather than just submitting changes
> back to the community elected release manager.  Did I understand that
> correctly?

For the most part, yes. I was not suggesting that you not publish your
code base at all: only that the method of maintaining a public git
repo and making submissions to the current release manager is and has
been the modus operandi of the community rather than each doing their
own "release."

> If so, I can say that there is no intent to ever do such a thing
> again for a variety of reasons, including the confusion it has caused.

Point well taken! Even the best of intentions is misunderstood at
times, and I'm thrilled that we are now able to work through all of
this.

<snip>

> I like your point on simply merging everything back together and thus
> eliminating these complexities.  This is not a small piece of work by any
> means, but I am biased towards "simple".  Unfortunately, the LLEK code base
> was not maintained in such a way as to make merging back with the community
> maintained Official Koha easy; it in fact will be challenging.  No one can
> say with certainty what the intent of the LibLime owners were at the time
> LLEK was established, but if they were intending to fork the code it would
> look very much like what we have acquired.
>

<snip>

I think that we will just have to agree to disagree on the point of
the difficulty of re-merging the LLEK code base back into the official
code base. There are individuals in this community with professional
experience in merging much, much more difficult messes back together
than LLEK ever thought about being.

>
> So, while we seem to be in agreement on the goal (which is great!);
> achieving this in the next few weeks or months, while meeting our client
> commitments is just not very likely.  It would be great for LibLime (me in
> particular), to not have these multiple baseline issues, but that's not the
> hand I've been dealt.  So, please accept my assurance that we share the goal
> of a single baseline over time and are going to take incremental steps
> towards that as we work on our client commitments, but this will take a good
> deal of time to get where we all want to be.  The lesson for all involved is
> that un-doing a fork is painful and expensive.

A sorrowful lesson indeed.

Thanks for your responsiveness, Sean. This is a refreshing change in
what has heretofore been a rough relationship.

Kind Regards,
Chris