[Koha-devel] Koha Foundation : Librarians comments

[MJ Ray]

"Irma Birchall" <irma at bigpond.net.au>
> As promised, here is a short summary of comments received from a few
> librarians I spoke with, who have been involved in the evaluation and
> selection of a new ILS for their library, in the past 5 years. They all
> mention how challenging and time consuming a task it was. Especially for
> syndicated libraries.

Thank you for collecting these comments. I think some of
them (marketing especially) are things we knew, some are common
to other ILSes (quality, ease of evaluation) and some are
opportunities (roadmap responsiveness).

How did being part of an existing foundation compare for
professionalism and longevity?

Two points I would comment on:

> *	Longevity: Projects backed by commercials companies are seen to have
> more longevity.
> *	Support: commercial software vendors have support staff dedicated to
> helping customers solve problems with the product.  For busy librarians,
> this was the main benefit in using proprietary software.

Koha is backed by commercial companies who have support staff who
help customers solve problems. Another part of the marketing challenge.
I think many people see "open source" as meaning "abandonware", which
is another reason to speak about freedom.

> *	Rapid updates: libraries struggle anyway to keep up with change.
> Don't open source projects all follow the "Release Early, Release Often"
> paradigm? Some functions might need upgrading but the rest is just fine.
> How would that work? 

Many projects, including koha, get around this by having a two-track
stable/development split. Another thing to market.

> *	They would feel more comfortable adopting an open source product if
> it had published books/manuals/documentation this would be seen as a strong
> indicator of the software's level of maturity and adoption.  The Foundation
> could publish these.

I would be unhappy with the foundation undertaking commercial
activity that competed with existing koha support companies.

Thanks again,
-- 
MJ Ray - personal email, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/  irc.oftc.net/slef  Jabber/SIP ask