[Koha-devel] www.koha-fr.org, new look

[MJ Ray]

Russel Garlick <russel at katipo.co.nz>

> But I think it raises and interesting point that is worth of discussion 
> in relation to how we market Koha.
> 
> What I am thinking about is "what is best for the Koha brand".

Right now, I think it's best to get the message out there everywhere.
I don't think koha should be a "brand" in the sense we fret over
protection and hinder friends who want to promote it.

> So with this all in mind -
> 
> What is the purpose of the Koha England site?
> 
> Is is
> 
> a) To be seen as a subsite of the koha.org site for users and developers 
> in England to pool resources that are specific to the use and 
> development of Koha in England and the UK
> 
> or is it
> 
> b) A tool to promote your the services of your own Koha company.

More a than b, but that's a false dilemma. If koha resources
are more accessible to England, it will promote all koha services.
That includes ours, but self-promotion isn't the main aim. I just
don't know any other England-based firms yet. Nor does koha.org.

The main purpose is to document the available resources in a way
that is accessible to our audience, to make available new
resources when appropriate and to translate the documents
into English English (started) and Esperanto (not started).
At the moment, it's sort of a limited back-burner project,
as koha.org is much improved and I had hoped to share templates.

> I think we need to make it clear that Koha is the product of a project 
> and is *not* what appears to be a company or other entity. So following 
> this train of though the Koha template should not be used by individual 
> companies to promote their own services. There are no Koha franchises or 
> official Koha regions given to individual companies to exploit.

If you followed that protectionism line, then we all should
rebrand koha and sell it under other names. As a community,
we would gain a lot more by having a shared brand resource,
a reversed "tragedy of the commons" effect. Why can't we
cooperate?

> I was under the impression that Paul and Henri were taking the content 
> of the koha.org site, which is all in English.  And translating it into 
> French to make it more accessible for this audience.

!!! I don't think the site is that similar, from my reading!
It's another koha site, in French. There are some translations,
but not all close or current.

> I think the best solution would be to find a way that we can facilitate 
> a multi-lingual koha.org site. [...]

Not really. koha.org is on the dark side of the moon, in network
terms from England. Sorry, but Eng-NZ internet links aren't good. 

Best wishes,
-- 
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