[Koha] Foundation conversation

[Indranil Das Gupta]

Hi,

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 9:57 AM, ed c <terrapin44 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
>
> --- On Fri, 10/15/10, Bob Birchall @ Calyx <bob at calyx.net.au> wrote:
>
> > From: Bob Birchall @ Calyx <bob at calyx.net.au>
> > Subject: Re: [Koha] Foundation conversation
> > To: koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
> > Date: Friday, October 15, 2010, 9:31 PM
> >
> >
> > David wrote:
> > > from the outside it sure doesn't look 'settled', the
> > issues of governance
> > > (and more precisely, arguments over such issues)
> > directly involve the
> > > probability of the product being viable in the
> > future.
> > >
> >
> > Huh?  Where do you get that from?  There is a
> > strong and vibrant project at
> > koha-community.org with input from around the world
> > (including the USA).  A
> > US support company runs another project (LEK - which is not
> > open source as
> > far as I know).  Many people hope that these two can
> > be brought back
> > together.  But to suggest that is critical to the
> > future of the project
> > misunderstands how the project works, imho.
>
> That is easy to say for people in the community or very familiar with it
> (and possibly even to those who understand Open Source development), but it
> can be a huge red flag for others. Perception is reality.
>

I've been reading the thread. But seriously, I find the bullshit threshold
has been finally crossed, so I can no longer keep silent about a project
I've deeply cared about since late 2003 and continue to do so.

The project is Koha. A great set of people, friendly and helping. - Chris,
Paul, HDL, Rachel Rosalie, Jo (jransom) russel, Owen, MJ, and yes even
Joshua (he was doing great, until things went to his head or he lost its
control) and all the new people in the last few years - galen, chris_n,
nicole, kmkale (from Anant Corp, India), Amit and Savitra (from OSSlabs,
India), and many more.

To clarify, I'm not a customer of the employers on any of these good people
mentioned above. I'm an independent FOSS consultant from India who happens
to implement Koha in a few libraries here.

People talking about pro / anti PTFS are smoking some serious dope. Had it
been two decades earlier I might had really liked to try on some of that.
;-)

To cut a long story short, my stand is simple - I'm pro-Koha. Yes! the Koha
which embodies the sense of that wonderful maori word and is FOSS to boot.

We undertook prolonged discussions about what to do, when PTFS tried to
spoil the game for everybody (withholding access to the community website,
the source code control etc).

And finally we voted - overwhelmingly in favor of HLT to be the custodian.
We have moved on. Work got done, documentation updated, testing done,
patches committed, only few days away from the launch of 3.2, and planning
is underway for 3.4.

More and more folks are jumping in, from all parts of the world. Even
companies from India have expressed interest on adding specific feature sets
to 3.4. A book was published too.

Collectively we represent customers / users, developers and companies
working around Koha and yes, we seem to be able to get the job done -
*together*. What's stopping us? Nothing!

So why do we want to waste our time engaging in a pointless debate over
something that's already been dealt with? The Koha community website should
has a prominent signage saying "People at work! Do Not Disturb!"

Yes,like everyone else's PTFS's contributions to the codebase and
participation in the community would be *welcome*. But like I said, is the
lack of it stopping us? The answer is a clear "No".

So why bother? Koha community's door remain open as always. Whether to walk
in or stand out is the (would-be) entrant's decision.

Enough said!

/me back to work.

cheers
-indra


-- 
Indranil Das Gupta

Phone : +91-98300-20971
Blog    : http://indradg.randomink.org/blog
IRC      : indradg on irc://irc.freenode.net
Twitter : indradg

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