Reed, <div>This is exactly what I was trying to get at and I think what I've come away with -- after sorting through all this -- is that it requires educating the clients of companies doing development. We (clients) must insist on more than features we want developed. We need to also ensure that they will be developed according to the Koha community norms; namely, in such a way as to ensure that the resulting product benefits everyone and doesn't lock me (client) into a single vendor for support and further development.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Lori<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 6:00 AM, Reed Wade <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:reed@catalyst.net.nz">reed@catalyst.net.nz</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
It's a bit anti-optimal (for everyone) to let your feature mods age<br>
for 6-12 (or more) months. But it also depends on the next step. Is<br>
PTFS/LL going to submit them to the current release manager as patches<br>
against a recent Koha release or just make some random code available<br>
someplace that implements those features in some old or private<br>
version of Koha and call it done?<br>
<br>
Unless it's delivered in a useful way then entities hiring PTFS/LL to<br>
perform development work are funding features that are only ever going<br>
to usable by current PTFS/LL customers. Even the funder loses the<br>
ability to use those features unless they keep buying maintenance<br>
services so they have access to the private code (I would expect).<br>
<br>
Lot's of speculation--as always it would be sweet to hear from them.<br>
Maybe after the americaland holiday.<br>
<br>
For those new to software development, a question to ask anyone you<br>
hire to add features to Koha would be "When could I expect this to be<br>
in an official Koha public release?" Things like the Harley tar file<br>
are nice (and way better than nothing) but are missing the work of<br>
taking the code that next critical step and instead depend on the<br>
chance that others will pick out those features of interest and<br>
perform the additional work.<br>
<br>
(PTFS/LL, please join this conversation so that we're not just<br>
speculating on what your future actions might be.)<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
-reed<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5">_______________________________________________<br>
Koha mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz">Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz</a><br>
<a href="http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha" target="_blank">http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha</a><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>