[Koha-devel] Not sure how to contribute, but I thought I'd share.

[paul POULAIN]

Pat Eyler wrote:

>>I've never contributed code to an Open Source project before so if I'm
>>doing it all wrong I'm sorry.
>>
You're NOT doing wrong. It's the right place. Note that you could create 
a "bugreport" in bugzilla (bugs.koha.org), with an attached patch, but 
he could have been lost in the middle of other bugs.

>>I work for an adult learning center (state
>>funded basic education for adults) with a small library. We just
>>downloaded and installed Koha and it looks great. The z3950 search tool
>>didn't function quite as we expected. We were hoping to be able to use a
>>barcode scanner to read the barcode and start the search, but the form
>>only takes ISBN and the barcode is EAN (which has 8 of the ISBN digits
>>encoded in it). We modified
>>'/koha/intranet/cgi-bin/acqui.simple/marcimport.pl ' so that if the ISBN
>>query was 13 digits instead of 9, then convert the 13 digit EAN to a 9
>>digit ISBN before its submitted to the queue. It seems to be working,
>>but we aren't using any other part of the search so I'm not sure how
>>well the patch works. I'm attaching a diff of the changes in case those
>>in charge decide they would like them or if anyone else on the list can
>>use them. Again if this isn't the right place, or more information is
>>needed please let me know. Thanks for such a great, open source software
>>package.
>>
The beauty of OSS / Free software is that 100 ppl comes with a little 
bit of wood, and everybody go back home with a full table, with chairs & 
bbq :-)
I mark your mail "red" as reminder for me : i'll test/include it asap.
Nicholas R => feel free to add our new contributor to the contrib list.
Jeremy, your school is now co-owner of Koha[1]. Congratulations.

>>Thank you for getting involved.  If you think you'll continue to
>>contribute code to Koha, I'd recommend that you subscribe to the
>>koha-devel mailing list, and that you get a sourceforge account and let me
>>know what it is so that I can get you set up as a developer on the
>>project.
>>    
>>
Pate, maybe the sun is too hot in USA (it's really hot in France here), 
but Jeremy posted this mail on koha-devel, so he already subscribes the 
ml :-D

[1] It may seems to be not important, but it is important : if one day 
someone wants to change Koha licence, he MUST get aknowledgment of ALL 
contributors.
Or remove all the corresponding code. (Note you don't have to worry too 
much : i'm author of 99% of MARC stuff, & I don't intend to say yes if 
someone wanted to change the licence :-) )

-- 
Paul POULAIN
Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres
responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)