[Koha] Summary of Open session at KohaCon13 - with a focus on Funding the Future of Koha.

[MJ Ray]

Paul Poulain wrote:
> Le 07/11/2013 17:31, glaws a écrit :
>> *+1. Excellent idea! How would this work? Would the
>> funding organization contract directly with a separate dev
>> to signoff/QA, or would the code developer contract
>> with someone to do this? Would there be a conflict of
>> interest if the funding organization had someone on their staff
>> sign/QA if that person was qualified?*
> I started a private discussion with some other developers yesterday,
> about this question.
> 
> There are different ways to achieve this goal:
>  * the funder funds 3 different organisations he choose
>  * the funder funds 1 organisation, that sub-contract 2 others

Uh-oh!  I think both of those present the same conflict of interest that
is why it is(was?) discouraged for people from one company to do all the
development and signing on a patch: they all have a short-term financial
incentive to approve less-than-great work.  I'm sure many wouldn't, but
it still means the reviews aren't very independent.

I'd like it if developers could barter sign-off reviews (not the actual
sign-offs, because it takes as much time to reject with reasons - if not
more time) in a bit more structured/asynchronous way than the current
IRC-based begging/nagging.  Then a funder could fund 1 organisation and
it barters reviews with others to ensure its developments get reviewed.
 Has anyone an easy way to do this?

Think of it like product reviews in magazines.  If the manufacturer is
paying for the review, it's seen as less reliable than if the recipients
of the review are paying for it... we could see the pot of bartered
reviews as like the koha-community paying for reviews - but paying by
writing other reviews.

That still leaves QA as a question, but it's reviews/signoffs that is
the tighter bottleneck, isn't it?

Other that that aspect, I agree with much of what Paul wrote, which
should surprise almost no-one.

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op
http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/