[Koha] report generation-Till Reconciliation for each branchlibraries

[Joshua Ferraro]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 2:32 PM, Chris Cormack <chris at bigballofwax.co.nz> wrote:
> Wow, how defensive we developers are.
I don't think this is defensive, it's pragmatic. Brooke is making
valid points to be sure--this project isn't perfect--but it's very
important to understand that there are reasons for the problems we
face. In particular, we have a real dearth of development resources
relative to the number of Koha users.

> I think its worth acknowledging that Brooke has made some valid
> points. That we do need to be careful that we make Koha usable for as
> many people as possible. And while Joshua is right we mostly have to
> code what the libraries are asking for we should be careful we don't
> undo what other libraries have already paid for also.
>
> If something is broke, lets fix it. Lets not just throw features out.
I completely agree, we should strive to fix broken code, but sometimes
we're forced to throw out completely broken stuff and start over. Just
to be clear, if a report or feature causes the whole of Koha to lock
up if you've got more than 10,000 records, any RM worth their salt
will need to either fix it or remove it. If we had a swell of
volunteer developers doing free work on Koha in their spare time I'd
expect this kind of thing would get worked out on its own, but the
fact is, more than 90% of Koha development is done by developers who
work for specific customers and we're very strapped for resources, and
we have to focus on coding stuff that customers that are paying our
bills.

I don't think any developer who's looked at the code will argue that
the NOMARC stuff could have been preserved in 3.0 without a serious
investment in development time (hundreds of hours). As the RM, I
certainly did my best to make 3.0 as backwards compatible as possible,
but the fact is, I had to draw the line somewhere. As it is, I was
heavily criticized for how long it took for 3.0 to get out the door.

I'd be very interested in hearing any suggestions from users like
Brooke for how we could address this resource problem and make sure
that we have enough resources in the community to make sure that the
needs of libraries that can't afford to pay for development are still
met.

Cheers,

-- 
Joshua Ferraro                       SUPPORT FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE
CEO                         migration, training, maintenance, support
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