[Koha-devel] KOHA version 3.0, my question is about the advantages of KOHA 4

[Clay Fouts]

"1. the fork exists mainly because of Liblime's 3.0 release manager;"

Back to "Josh made me do it!" chorus... Five months of lead time is not
exactly a last minute change. But I suppose that's as good of excuse as any.

I stand corrected in regards to you passing off your fork as "Koha". So then
why does so little of your work show up in the community repository? Does
software.coop just not do much software development?

Clay


On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 5:28 AM, MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop> wrote:

> Brendan A. Gallagher wrote:
> > Please get your facts straight before you continue with this thread
> > and us other companies names.  Comment in-line.
>
> Yes, I agree with that sentiment.  Liblime workers appearing to
> actively fib about other community participants is a new step back.
>
> > On Jun 6, 2011, at 9:05 AM, Clay Fouts wrote:
> > > Is Software Coop's fork Koha?
>
> No, and we don't market it as such.  (It's software.coop, by the way.)
>
> All but one of our libraries are on Koha releases available from
> koha-community.org and all patches we create are sent back,
> but those have been fairly small and sporadic since then.  The
> release management seems much better in 3.2 and 3.4.
>
> For anyone new to this topic, that fork is a single-library variant of
> Koha which I feel Liblime forced us into a few years ago.  The 3.0
> release manager (Josh, then owner of Liblime) refused to hold back
> from adopting a feature in one of the template modules that:
>
>  1. was not portable;
>  2. Liblime had requested;
>  3. was not packaged for mainstream operating systems yet; and
>  4. did not compile on that library's servers at that time.
>
> Remember that Josh had announced Koha 3.0 would be released at the end
> of 2006, then in July 2008, he presented us with the prospect that a
> library which had patiently helped us to develop 3.0 wouldn't be able
> to use it when it was released!  The co-op's core mission is "to
> provide computer-related services" so we did what we had to do to
> serve that library.
>
> The main bit of the thread provoking the fork starts at
>
> http://lists.koha-community.org/pipermail/koha-patches/2008-July/007016.html
>
> tl;dr where I disclose that we've forked for the one library is
>
> http://lists.koha-community.org/pipermail/koha-patches/2008-August/007309.html
>
> > > I understand there are large differences that they are not paying
> > > to port back into the community base.
>
> What gave you that idea?  The co-op is using our own money to fund
> porting them back (for various reasons rooted in government cuts IMO,
> the original project won't complete any time soon), so it's taking far
> longer than I would like.  I shudder to think of the cost that this
> fork has incurred.
>
> > I even recall seeing an announcement that someone was paying ByWater
> > to do the work of porting the coop's EDI code back to
> > community. Does this qualify as "cooperation"?
>
> That EDI code was developed for the same one library which is why it's
> based on the fork.  Bywater have agreed to help us with porting this
> back sooner and we really appreciate that, but I don't remember any
> announcement about someone paying them to do it.  Please post links,
> like I did above, so anyone can see for themselves.
>
> > How is this different from LibLime publishing its code so that any
> > library is welcome to pay the vendor of their choosing to back port
> > it to community?
>
> Key differences:
>
> 1. the fork exists mainly because of Liblime's 3.0 release manager;
>
> 2. it's used at one library and we've been quite open about that;
>
> 3. we still support the community, on IRC, web, in meetings, and so on;
>
> 4. we have never tried to pass the fork off as Koha or booted the
> community out of resources they developed;
>
> 5. despite the massive cost, we will port the key features and not
> publish a tangled mess as abandonware for the community to sort out;
>
> 6. we have shared it with other Koha developers, both at Kohacon10
> and otherwise;
>
> 7. we normally sell the proper Koha releases.
>
> > Software Coop is not paying ByWater Solutions to rebase EDI for
> > Koha.  This is a project that we are pursuing and we are using our
> > own money to fund for our time to rebase this code.  [...]
>
> Thanks to Bywater, once again.
>
> > Hopefully that makes sense - if not, you are welcome to give me a
> > phone call whenever you want.
>
> Similarly, anyone is welcome to call the co-op - we now have local
> access numbers in over 35 countries, linked on
> http://www.software.coop/contact/
>
> Hope that clarifies,
> --
> MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
> Webmaster, Debian Developer, Past Koha RM, statistician, former lecturer.
> In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
> Available for hire for various work through http://www.software.coop/
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