[Koha] Pay for Support - a Suggestion

Sat May 9 16:52:09 NZST 2009

HI All,

After some thought,  I have a suggestion for how to order the the 
listings on the pay for page which I hope is both fair,  accurate, has 
longevity, and is useful to the people visiting the page for whom we're 
providing the info.

In the past we've ordered by region and we've ordered alphabetically. At 
the moment the suggestion is to order by date joined and I don't think 
that's a good idea (see below for why).

      FIRST 3-4 PLACES

I'd like to propose that the first "3" positions (possibly more but no 
more than 4), be ordered by current release manager position held in the 
community, and that after that, depending on how many listings we have, 
they be ordered by region & alphabetically.

I'd like to see the first position on the list be given to the current 
release manager's company (Lilime ATM). I think that the job of current 
release manager is huge, and that the company who is currently providing 
the resources/employment of the release manager deserves all the support 
and credit we can give, even if they joined yesterday! I agree with Josh 
that there can seem like not much benefit to being the release manager 
(or being their boss!), and so this seems to me like a "no brainer". 
ALSO if I was a library wanting to get some development done then that's 
the first thing I would want to know, and lets face it, we want to 
encourage those libraries who DO want development done.

The second position on the list would be given to the current release 
maintainer- ie the release manager for the current stable release (Bib 
Libre ATM). Again, I think this is a big job, they are still doing a lot 
of patching, answering a lot of questions  on lists and generally 
putting in a goodly amount of time and effort getting the current 
release more stable, mostly I'm sure not directly funded. Again I think 
that supporting the company that is providing the resources for someone 
to do this job is the least we can do. It again would mean that a 
library was "buying into" the idea of supporting the current stable release.

The third & fourth positions on the list could be to either the 
immediate past release maintainer (in our case v 2.x - assuming they are 
a different company), or the next company providing the most tangible 
support to the community.

I think however that we stop this system after the top 3-4 positions, 
because it is less useful after that. It may be that when there is a KSF 
(or similar) there are some other positions which because of the amount 
of work they entail, justify giving this same privileged to their 
supporting company in which case we can extend it, and have clear rules 
around it too.

I quite like the idea of the immediate past release managers being 
listed (ie if they have stopped being current and aren't funding another 
release themselves), because again being release manager is such a big 
job, I think they deserve recognition beyond their "active term" - and 
it kinda means they get a guaranteed "cash in" time for all that hard 
work, even if they need to pass the torch to someone else for the next 
release and concentrate or just building their own business.

      REST OF THE LIST

THEN thinking about our actual website users, I imagine that what they 
mostly want is to see who supports their area, so I'd like to see the 
list split into countries or regions, ordered alphabetically, and with 
the vendors listed alphabetically within them, including info on 
contributions, positions held etc, if they are on/members of a KSF or 
similar. It may be that we get big enough it's worth having the company 
who supports or is principle sponsor of the local  usergroup get first 
position in that grouping - but that's a bit down the track.

WHY - well I think it's easier to read and understand, and to re-find a 
company that way.

It will also make it easier to split up the list into "sane" chunks if 
it gets to  big for one "page". Ie it's pretty easy to have a North 
America page, a South America page, a European Page, An African page, an 
Australasian page etc in the future, and will make more sense to the 
libraries trying to use it I think that having a "started in 2005" page.

      WHY NOT BY DATE

I don't think that date joined is the best way to actually indicate who 
is a good company (or person) to deal with, and date joined is no 
inherent indicator of current involvement in a release, or even that the 
company would be a good choice for getting the current release installed 
& supported.

Katipo is a prime example of why not list by date (Even before selling 
to Liblime), we had not funded a release manager for a few years, and 
hadn't as a company been able to afford much official involvement in the 
project, even though individuals still participated. I don't think that 
it would be fair particularly, for us to be top of a page when others 
were doing so much more (and indeed we listed alphabetically in part to 
avoid that temptation).

While at the moment, the longest involved (listed) companies are at the 
top of the page, I would would like to see us have a policy that 
effectively achieves the same thing because I think those companies 
should be at the top of the listings, but is "defensible", and 
understandable for both libraries and vendors, and that allows for other 
worthy companies in years to come to also get a spot in the sun if they 
put in the hard yards like these guys have.

Cheers
Rachel

-- 
-----------------------------
Rachel Hamilton-Williams
General Manager
Katipo Communications Ltd

Phone:  +64-4-934 1285
Mobile: 021 389 128
E-mail: rachel at katipo.co.nz
Web:    www.katipo.co.nz

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