[Koha] [Koha-translate] [Koha-devel] Announcing ... New koha.org Website based on Plone

[MJ Ray]

Joshua Ferraro <jmf at liblime.com> wrote:
> Many of the Koha vendors listed on the support page do not contribute 100%
> of the code they write for customers to the community, and we've learned
> over the past fwew years that in some cases this is due to them not being
> paid for that effort, and in other cases, its a deliberate attempt to
> proprietize components of the services they offer.

TTLLP software.coop has, from our inception in 2002, contributed 100%
of our Koha code to the community.  It doesn't always get to koha.org
because sometimes it gets rejected or sometimes there's a bit of a delay
in preparing patches against head, particularly when we've forked in
order to stabilise a release to our co-op customers and didn't budget
for that in advance, but it's always public at some point.

We believe in cooperative values and principles, especially concern
for community.  Approximately 35% of my time last year was spent on
community work.  Some of my colleagues do more, some do less.  I've
asked other support companies to join us in a cooperative, but none
took it up and one objected (without reason IIRC).  I've asked for the
project to associate with one of the long-running global software
foundations, even just as a stepping-stone to a worldwide Koha
foundation, but it hasn't happened yet.  I'd be interested to hear
directly from any Koha users who want to join a co-op or foundation.

However, we also believe in open membership and I think the current
support page format is a barrier to entry, not an incentive.  It's
more of an incentive to fork the project website than to contribute
because it will take years for anyone's entry to compete with the
current big LibLime advert.

There are some conflicts of interest, too. Firstly, as Release
Managers for the last and next releases, LibLime employees control the
amount of code from different providers which enter the codebase:
non-LibLime patches are rejected more often than LibLime patches; and
some patches have been reattributed to LibLime.  Secondly, as sole
webmasters for the website now, LibLime has an incentive not to
update.

Thirdly, it's bad marketing for the community: it makes the support
directory too long and 55% is a monopoly-level share which makes the
Koha community look weak.  (Arguably, the Koha community is a bit
weaker than ideal at the moment, but we shouldn't make it look weak to
potential buyers!)

[...]
> I respectfully disagree. Listing by date joined is the most
> vendor-independent and community-focused. Another fair option would be to
> list in order of contributions, most to least. This community is, after all,
> a meritocracy :).

User-sortable listings are the best.  If this is a meritocracy, let
the ideas compete on their merits and user-sortable (which wasn't
considered in the previous private discussion) will win.

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef).  LMS developer and supporter for a small, friendly
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237