[Koha] Proposal to form Koha Technical Committee

[Irma Birchall]

Below are notes that Bob and I compiled from a meeting at the KohaCon10 
hackfest in Wellington last Sunday.
We're trying to put these up on the wiki but haven't found how to edit 
the relevant page. In the meantime, we'll just share them here on list.
The notes are self explanatory, we hope.
We look forward to a vigorous discussion (as usual).

Irma
CALYX

Discussion about decision making for Koha technical issues
kohacon10 hackfest 31 October 2010

At the kohacon10 hackfest, Paul Poulain of Biblibre initiated a 
discussion about the way strategic decisions are to be made in relation 
to the Koha software. Paul is concerned that there is no forum for 
decision making beyond the next release. The role of Release Manager is 
focused on ensuring there is a stable, on-time release incorporating 
agreed features. But there are other longer-term architectural issues to 
be determined beyond the scope of the RM role.

In the broad-ranging discussion, the following points were made:

Pending decisions include: move to solR; mod_perl or plack; move to T::T 
; move to time based release; how to coordinate developments like EDI 
and RFID, amongst others.

It is not clear how to get decisions made about major software issues. 
There is also the problem of coordinating development of features.

    * how do we coordinate development?
    * who decides?
    * what is the structure for deciding?

The current decision-making forum is the monthly irc meeting. Other 
forums for discussion include the developers' list and the wiki 
(especially RFCs).

Issues discussed on irc and koha-devel sometimes don't get resolved. No 
clear roadmap about what will get included in next official release.

Some other open source projects have a suite of core code and plug-ins 
for extra or alternative features.

Commitments made to clients have to be met often between official 
releases. This has affected Biblibre, Xercode, Software Coop and 
Liblime. Risk of more forks if structure to decide is not clear.

The problem applies to both software architecture issues and features. 
There may be one solution or several strategies to mitigate the problem.

Suggestion to create a Technical Committee.

Alternatively a committee structure : small working groups to make 
recommendations.

Observation that arranging meetings across world time zones is 
difficult. Meetings are time consuming. Hard for key developers to 
attend multiple meetings. Keep difficulties in mind.

Current meetings deal with the immediate, not the long term. A 
structural development meeting could be held regularly to discuss longer 
term development.

The need may be for:

    * a transparent process about what development will make it into
      official Koha; plus
    * each company must have its own procedure for dealing with
      client-sponsored features that will not be selected into a release
      version.

RFCs are the usual way to elicit discussion of proposed features.

But because everyone is so busy, they usually don't attract much 
discussion. For example, a number of RFCs were submitted in September by 
Nucsoft OSS but don't seem to have received much comment.

Suggestion for developers to make an on-line (skype or irc) presentation 
of major proposed new features. Forum for input by others. Follow up 
discussion would be on list.

Technical Committee could have 6 to 8 members -- rotating.

Opportunity for Librarians Discussion Group as another regular meeting? 
Ensure library standards are applied and kept up to date. Could link 
project with academia.

Another potential forum is an Opac Advisory Committee.

Current practice is that all meetings are open to all to attend. Mood is 
to retain this approach.

People scheduling a meeting should add the event to the Calendar on 
koha-community.org and send an email to the list. (To check if this can 
be automated?).

Format for minutes of meetings was discussed.

For further discussion and resolution at the Monthly IRC Meeting on 10 
November.


-- 
Irma Birchall
CALYX information essentials
Koha & Kete implementations and services
T:(02) 80061603
M: 0413 510 717
irma at calyx.net.au <mailto:irma at calyx.net.au>
www.calyx.net.au <http://www.calyx.net.au/>
http://koha-community.org/
http://kete.net.nz/
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