[Koha] Koha demo links on koha.org

[Ben Ide]

It does help explain.  Thank you.

My apologies if it seemed like I was attacking your group.  I assure
you, that was not my intent.  (Never is, really.)  I wanted to mention
some examples, and -- because you have been so open about it -- the
software.coop worked.

Thanks,
-- Ben

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 1:27 AM, MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
> Ben Ide asked:
>> [...] How is LibLime's actions different from those of
>> software.coop, the work done for the Learning Access Institute, and
>> HTL?
>
> Well, with software.coop, I think the main differences are that:
>
> 1. LibLime (17 developers in Koha git log up to rel_3_0) seems much
> bigger than software.coop (5 members, of which 3 have touched Koha
> so far because we're trying to grow sustainably);
>
> 2. LEK appears to be from choice, rather than from any other community
> member backing them into it.
>
> I've been quite clear about two things about our fork:-
>
> 1. the software.coop fork occurred primarily because of enthusiastic
> adoption of non-essential new upstream library features which didn't
> work on some of our platforms in the time we needed it.  When I
> started to work around that problem, a LibLime developer stated
> outright that "Nobody else wants to do this, and for good reason,
> since performance will suffer greatly".  (It didn't FWIW.)  So,
> mainline Koha wasn't going to work for us.  What choice did the
> community give us?  It seemed like a clear "fork or quit" situation
> that you put us in.
>
> 2. we have been reconciling our fork with the koha.org releases and I
> have promised to push anything significant (probably to gitorious I
> think) as soon as I get spare worker time.  We will not be throwing it
> over the wall in a "contribution phase of development [at] the end of
> the cycle".  A little stuff has already appeared in patches and we've
> tried to contribute otherwise too.
>
> In short, we do not expect to externalise the cost of our fork to the
> community.  If anyone wants to pay us to merge, that would be great,
> but I don't expect it.
>
> So please stop attacking us: "concern for community" is one of our
> business's basic principles, so you know we'll come good.  I think
> we're also the only for-service (rather than for-profit) vendor.
>
> I agree that it's pretty certain that some other Koha developers have
> private forks which they haven't been this open about and haven't yet
> promised to reconcile (some have, which I applaud).  It would be good
> if their Koha users held them to account and at least got a similar
> contribution promise from them to that which I've made and which some
> others have done/started.
>
> [...]
>> > It is my humble opinion that your organization could very possibly be
>> > in the best position to make such a valuable contribution to this
>> > community.
>>
>> Thank you.  But as it's been said before, corporations have the right
>> to profit and programmers have the right to get paid.
>
> So what does that mean?  You won't help get a similar promise?
>
> Also, I don't know who said that, but I feel they're wrong.
> Programmers have the right to get paid a living wage, but corporations
> have no *right* to profit from community resources any more than
> librarians have a right to sell their community's books and keep the
> money.
>
>> I have another question that maybe someone can help me with.  I've
>> been reading a bit about git and it seems like a real pain to use
>> while you're developing code.  Afterwards, when you're writing it, it
>> seems like a decent tool for dissemination, but before you're done it
>> seems really cumbersome.  Is there something I'm missing?
>
> Some GUI tools and git stash, perhaps?
>
> Hope that explains,
> --
> MJ Ray (slef)  LMS developer and webmaster at     | software
> www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk        |  .... co
> IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html |  .... op
>
>