[Koha] Release of software under open source license

[Rachel Hamilton-Williams]

Hi Andrew,

> I hope you don't mind this off-topic post (please reply off-list if you
> think this is impertinent :-)

Happy to share :-)  I'm Rachel from Katipo, we wrote Koha with/for the 
Horowhenua Library Trust.  We have another GPL package (a timesheeting 
system), and some software that isn't released, so can certainly walk you 
through the "decision tree" that we use.  
 
> I am currently involved in a project to produce software for a public
> service in New Zealand and consideration is being given to releasing the
> resulting software under the [MG]PL.

> The key issue for us at present is the (somewhat lame?) one of 'security
> through obscurity' that you get by not telling everyone how you did
> this.

The things that we've taken into consideration when releasing software is...

1/. How "stand alone" is it.  One of the big things for us has been that the 
products need to be downloadable and installable in a fairly straightforward 
fashion. You shouldn't need to be an Apache or Linux Guru to get it going.  
We have other software that relies heavily on fine tuning the Apache Config of 
a machine, and we thought that made it unsuitable for Open Source at the 
moment.  One of the first things that people usually offer to do is to get the 
software going on whatever their system is, which is such a buzz :-)

2/. Are there other open source projects allready out there?  With Koha, we 
went open source earlier perhaps than we may have because no one else 
had a product available.  We figured that our at least usable system was an 
improvement on not really anything.

3/. What's your long term goal for the software?  Library software is a long 
term proposition, you want to have a good community of users and the 
libraries need to have more than one "vendor" or support company available 
to them. If you want any sort of world dominiation, you gotta let it go.

4/. What's your long term goal for your company?  Do you see yourselves as 
system X vendors - or are you developers?  If you're developers you probably 
need help selling your product, and open source is a good sales technique.

5/. How much money do you have?  If you don't have a pile of cash (and don't 
want to swim with the VC sharks) but you do want others to use it then it's a 
good way to go

6/. When will you have "won".  We have always considered more people 
using our system to be the "win", if you don't have to worry about selling the 
software thats a lot easier :-)

7/. Is the software "buggy" but usable - could it benefit from having some 
more brain power going into it - or are there features that it could use, but 
your clients don't have the interest, $$ or time to get you to put them in 
before release.   Your comments about security through obscurity fall into 
here I think. I know that the help we've had from others on security and 
general "goodness" of the code is immesurable.  

8/. Last but definitly not least, is the software something that other people 
want/need.  We released out timesheeting software, but frankly no one cares 
:-)  We get a couple of people interested in it a year, and some people 
download it, and thats fine.  There is no "easy" community of interest around 
timesheeting, its too broad.  However Libraries have conferences, and there 
is already a body of dicsussion around library software, so it's been a lot 
more sucessful.  Koha is of course a more ambitious project as well  - it has 
more "sex appeal" than a timesheeting system.

Once you think you want to go open source, then you need to decide what 
sort of license you use.

licenses and contracts are all about protecting things - so what do you want 
to protect?

The first decision we made was that the most important thing was that the 
software be "protected" from changes in Katipo's circumstances.    We didn't 
want to leave it open to "take over" by us, or another developer. 

The next most important thing to us was that Koha and the Horowhenua 
library should benefit from any new work.  So it had to be a license that 
stipulates that new work comes back to be shared.

The last thing I guess that was important to us was that it be enforceable if 
necessary, and there are a bunch of lawyers in the USA who take the GPL 
very seriously - we were heartened by that, having grand ideas but no legal 
budget.

For Koha going open source and GPL has been the making of the project.  It 
was part of the very early specifications that it be a GPL project, to give it the 
best chance of becomming something bigger than a piece of bespoke 
software, and to give the library the best chance of backup should anything 
happen to us.

Not so obvious, is that going open source makes it a more interesting project 
for the programmers.  It's fun to work with people overseas, to get requests 
for help from all over the world.  When you know other people are gonna look 
at your code - you usually write better code :-)

HTH

Cheers
Rachel


_____________________________________________________________

Rachel Hamilton-Williams             Katipo Communications            
WEBMISTRESS                          ph  021 389 128 or +64 04 934 1285 
mailto:rachel at katipo.co.nz           PO Box 12487, Wellington
http://www.katipo.co.nz              New Zealand
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