[Koha-devel] RFC: Plugins QA

[Paul]

At 01:02 PM 5/31/2013 -0400, Kyle Hall wrote (and maybe some attributions 
got lost):
>[snip]
>Agreed. Most plugin logic would make for a very good basis for an Koha 
>patch. [snip]
>
>I'm getting a bit of a twitch here -- I see the utility of this as a
>workaround, but I hope that this plugin has a very short life on
>account of the underlying bugs getting fixed.
>
>Agreed. This utility is a workaround for an as-of-yet unidentified bug. [snip]
>
>If I had known this would be of interest to more users, I would have 
>started with a patch instead of a plugin. I'd be more than happy to 
>patch-ify this plugin when I have the time. [snip]

Tarballs, packages, gits (including vendors), stables, latest, bugs and 
patches, wikis (various), tools, reports, live-DVDs, mailing lists, chat, 
maybe more, and now plug-ins?  Could we please look at what the "open 
source" world is doing? Apache, SendMail, Perl, PostFix, FireFox, Debian, 
Ubuntu, OpenOffice, LibreOffice ... are fairly stable with an established 
security update capability. Even Java and MySQL are simplifying.

I had a "rather important" librarian from Quebec drop in, out of the blue, 
yesterday to talk about Koha. Her group (37 libraries) had previously been 
burned by a trial commercial implementation of Koha (no need to quote 
names), so they're using Opals, but "liked the idea" of Koha. First 
question: "stability?"

She was well aware that we announce on our OPAC: "System change / Koha 
v3.8.4 on line 14 September 2012" (I think that was fairly timely) so she 
asked about 3.10 and 3.12; my answer "we're happy; two year cycle; look at 
it again in September 2014."

I know that a number of you will ... whatever ... Paul's a pain in the 
neck, doesn't understand, does his own thing, but the bottom line is that 
<http://opac.navalmarinearchive.com/> is fully functional and is 
intrinsically Koha. It's (reasonably) secure (without https) and meets the 
needs of our users and librarians. It runs itself with minimal ( < 1 
hour/week statistically ) intervention by IT personnel.

There are very few institutions that have "happiness" in the form of 
unlimited budgets and unlimited IT departments. I'm personally intrigued by 
the creativity of the Koha community, so try and follow what's happening -- 
which is magnificent -- but doubt that your average library has the same 
passion.

Koha needs the credibility and stability of a *system*, install, forget 
(except security), and put on your two-three year review list.

</rant>

Most respectfully, after nearly three years of getting to "know Koha" and 
some of the dedicated people involved,
Paul



---
Maritime heritage and history, preservation and conservation,
research and education through the written word and the arts.
<http://NavalMarineArchive.com> and <http://UltraMarine.ca>
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