[Koha]KohaLa

[Paul POULAIN]

(for ppl anxious of what will KohaLa be, and ppl that want to discover
some french specifics ;-) )

MJ Ray a écrit :
> MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
> Unhappily, it looks to me that, if those proposals pass:

Hello MJ,

Fortunatly, you seem to ignore what is a "french NPO"... Otherwise, you
would have realised how "ridiculous" your concern are. ("Ridiculous" in
french can have 2 meaning : one being "really small, and totally
useless". No negative sense here. I'm not sure it's the same in english,
so I specify ;-) )

> - Membership will not be open to all, requiring learning KohaLa's
> rules and demonstrating an interest to the satisfaction of the
> officers;

that's the basic of every "loi 1901 association", otherwise anyone
including opponents to Koha could join !

> - Members will not have equal voting rights (physical persons get one
> vote, corporations get two votes,

(Note that we speak of a NPO here, so a vote is NOT to split any money).
I don't see any problem here either. Frankly. Kohala is NOT a "company",
it's a "loi 1901 association". It's quite hard to explain what it means,
but nobody in france would be afraid or bothered by this decision !


> council of administration members
> share all unnominated votes between them);

Le me explain with an example: Kohala has recieved EUR 10 000 from
government, that want to support OpenSource development in libraries.
some ppl think it would be worth for sponsoring dev of feature X, other
think it would be better for sponsoring feature Y. So we vote.

There are 5 kinds of vote :
- ppl being here : they vote themself
- ppl NOT being here, but voting by snailmail : they vote themself
- ppl NOT being here, but saying to someone: "OK, You know my opinion, I
give you a paper saying you can vote 'in my name'"
- ppl NOT being here, but saying to the CA : "OK, I can't decide, but
I'm confident you'll take the right decision". To avoid having only the
president voting for all of them, the votes are splitted between all CA
members. That's a very equitable way of doing things in fact !!! the
president can't have the majority itself !
- ppl NOT being here, and saying nothing : they don't vote, it means
they don't care. So their non-vote is not counted in the results.

Once again, this is just theory in case something get in trouble, to
avoid being stuck. In reality, decisions are usually easy to take, and
recieve a 100% when we need to vote ! (which we must do anyway. And
usually, it's just a "hand up if you agree". If *one* ppl request it =>
secret vote)

> - Members will not contribute equitably to assets (some pay nothing,
> some pay double rate and all contributions are kept, even if KohaLa
> expels the member before end of their subscription);

"assets"... in french, this word is only used for profit organisation.
For NPO, we speak of "membership". And the membership will be very low
(something like 10€ annually).
The membership will only cover timestamp & printing ink probably ! (yes,
we need some, as once a year we must do an official "General Assembly"
and it must be announced to everybody by snail-mail (iirc).

The goal of a french loi 1901 is to have benevolent members that want to
support & lobby & do something for the object of the association. Most
associations get ressources from government for their actions.

So what is the goal of KohaLa: support & help Koha development. No more
no less. The idea of a fork is totally ridiculous : who could do that in
KohaLa, with which ressources ? No, really, it makes me laughing.
Thinking of it, I even think the fork is impossible, due to the object
of KohaLa : "help & support Koha". If KohaLa fork the project, then it's
no more Koha, then the association can't continue it's goal, then it
MUST be disolved[1] ! as simple as that !

[1] the association can be disolved by :
- it's members
- a gov decision, if someone proves that it does no more follow it's
objectives.

> - Therefore, assets will not be democratically and equitably controlled;

We don't have assets, we have members. fundamentally different in our
culture !

> Additionally:
> 
> - KohaLa need not offer any training to its elected representatives,
> which means anyone elected without knowing relevant French law will
> be in trouble.

anyone not knowing the french law seem to mis-understand what is a loi
"1901 association".

> This has a chilling effect on nominations - all of
> the current candidates seem to be French, which is not representative
> of Koha users or developers IMO, but who wants to put their head on
> a guillotine unsupported?;
> 
> - KohaLa is not directed to work with other projects or groups;

!!! KohaLa is directed to work for Koha. Nothing more, nothing less.

Let me explain by an example again...
A library from CNRS, encouraged by ENSMP want to build something for
african schools, for example setting Koha to rebuted computers that the
CNRS has.
It need some time, and some money (to send the computers to Ivory coast
for example)
time we have, we have benevolents.
money we don't have. So we are looking for some, and ask local gov. The
1st question we have is "OK, who are you ?" If we answer "we are a
company (=profit)", the answer is "OK, so I can't give you any money,
you're a profit organization, my money is only for NPO".
If we answer "we are a group of ppl", the answer is "OK, so I can't be
sure that you'll be doing what you plan, and I don't have any structure
to be sure".
So we MUST answer (at least in France) : "we are an association loi
1901" : then the potential funder (that can also be a profit
organisation, not necessary a governement agency) will know that :
- we are serious & organised
- we have an accounting system & annual reports
- our goal is NOT to earn money (forbidden by french law : if we have
more money than needed at the end of a year we can : keep it for next
year or give it to another association.It is considered as good
management to have something like 2 years in bank for a large & old
association. When the association is disolved, any remaining money
*must* be given to another association -remember, we don't have assets !-)

> - KohaLa does not concern itself with the wider community.

right & wrong : we spoke of this during devWeek, and it appears that
it's too hard to build something worldwide directly. So we start
building things locally.

> Is it possible to remedy this?  If so, how?

Knowing french associaitons is a good start ;-)

Just to conclude :
- there are more than ... 1 000 000 associations loi 1901 in france. for
almost anything you can imagine, and probably things you even can't
imagine. I'm sure there is an association to "convince english ppl that
eating frog is good" !
- the idea to see KohaLa as a "user group" is correct, but I hope KohaLa
will be more than that. For example, I hope that, one day, the
association will have money from gov to sponsor some dev. That will NOT
be done internally (by KohaLa), but given to someone (me, LibLime, MJ or
anyone willing & selected by KohaLa). Of course, the first mandatory
thing whe KohaLa will request, will be "this feature must be developped
in the "core" version of Koha !"

-- 
Paul POULAIN et Henri Damien LAURENT
Consultants indépendants en logiciels libres et bibliothéconomie
(http://www.koha-fr.org)
Tel : 04 91 31 45 19