[Koha] Summary of Open session at KohaCon13 - with a focus on Funding the Future of Koha.

[glaws]

<comment> note numerous snips from original post
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On 11/06/2013 09:38 PM, Brendan Gallagher wrote:
> Hello All -
>
> I’d like to give a summary of a open discussion that occurred at KohaCon14
> in Reno...a discussion on Funding the future of Koha...to
> educate the audience on some of the “plumbing” needs in the code...and how are we going to
> get that done.
>
> Many of these “needs” are larger projects...Not one support vendor
> can brunt the front of the plumbing needs that need to happen...We need to...plan going
> forward "now". 
>
> Points that were raised.
>
> ----snip---
> An important comment here from the attendees was that when someone is
> funding a development - they should not just fund the code, but also plan
> for time and funding for the Sign-Off process and the QA process.
*+1. Excellent idea! How would this work? Would the
funding organization contract directly with a separate dev
to signoff/QA, or would the code developer contract
with someone to do this? Would there be a conflict of
interest if the funding organization had someone on their staff
sign/QA if that person was qualified?*
> Funding and how would we organize this?  Since many in the audience were
> from the USA - there was discussion of getting a users group going again OR
> creating some sort of “non-profit like org” where libraries could pool
> funding towards projects.  An organization like this would be able to apply
> for grants etc.  Something where we could crowd-source funding and then
> fund a developer for a number of hours towards a project.
*+1. I also am generally in favor of charging some nominal amount
to attend KUG's/conferences. Even if it's just 25 USD--split the
amount between the hosting organization for coffee and contribute
some to Koha plumbing. US libraries typically can't just "donate"
money to anything, but they certainly are used to paying attendance
fees, and $25 or $50 is only a small fraction of the cost of flying
and hotels.*
.
*And as long as I'm on the general subject of funding, I've often
thought privately that there should be some way to help out the
Horowhenua Library Trust for their work of holding the Koha keys.
In an ideal world they should have a 10 million USD trust fund to
aggressively support Koha.*

>
>
> My thoughts on some things that we can do in the USA.
>
> Have a hackfest in Athen’s Ohio next summer.  Next year will be 10 years
> since Koha migrated to the US and I think it’s about time we have a
> hackfest here. 
*+1*
>  I have briefly talked with Owen Leonard about putting this
> together for next summer...
> Gauge the interest of a North American Koha users group so at least we are
> having more of the community meeting together and sharing practices and
> ideas.  Comments from Galen "As far as a US or North American user group
> goes: I think a relaunch should start off with just the goal of hosting a
> US/NA conference, as it would /not/ be necessary to set up a nonprofit
> first to run conferences.  
*+1*
> We'd just need willing hosts and, if necessary,
> a firm willing and able to act as a fiscal agent.  That's not to say that
> such a group couldn't pursue nonprofit status later, but we can get a lot
> of education and user-connecting done without ever having to have a formal
> organization."
>
> Brendan
>
*Staccato comment #1: most of the Koha conferences to date
(to the limited extent I'm qualified to comment on this) have been
very technically focused. Someday there will begin to be more and
more library staff attending, and those people will be more
interested in end-user things. And someday I expect that KohaCon's
will have different tracks, like code development, system
administration and library staff interest. I think we need to start
considering our audience soon.
*
*Staccato comment #2: apologies first, I've long considered the following,
but I have some trouble expressing it coherently. Say with a larger
project like plumbing, let's presume 250,000 USD is raised by some
means by an independent organization, and by some fair and
equitable method one of the major Koha support companies or
independent developers is selected to do the work. As far as
I know, all these qualified entities are already writing Koha code
full-time, i.e., nobody has a lawn-care business for their
daytime job and only write code when they get funded. So if we take
our 250k and pay for a major rewrite, we're taking away from the
development pool by substituting paid work for
"otherwise-compensated" work already being done.

Assuming we can equate the two types of work (improbable?),
there is no net gain. In economic terms, this *somewhat analogous* to an
"opportunity cost"-the cost of an alternative that must be forgone in
order to achieve a different objective.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this block, I struggle somewhat with
what this means, if anything, but it would be nice to find a way for
major funding developments to have an additive effect.

 

*
-- 
Greg Lawson
Network Administrator
Rolling Hills Consolidated Library
1912 N. Belt Highway
St. Joseph, MO 64506