[Koha-devel] Country-specific forks?

[Magnus Enger]

Dear Community!

A quote from another thread on koha-devel:

"I look at the code, and beside wondering why that custom feature
[Norwegian patron DB] is so profoundly imbricated into master Koha, I
was wondering what is not working."

I think this raises an interesting question. Should we let features
into Koha that are only of interest to libraries in one or a small
number of countries? Or should we confine those features to
country-specific forks?

The quote above implies (I think) that support for the Norwegian
patron DB should be in a country-specific fork.

On the other hand, the project implementing Koha for public libraries
in Turkey has been criticized for not integrating their customizations
into Koha. To which someone replied that the customizations were not
of much interest to libraries outside Turkey.

So do we want one Koha to rule them all, including country-specific
features, or do we want one fork per country?

Personally, I prefer the former. In the case of the Norwegian patron
DB, that is one of the 2-3 "must have" features that all Norwegian
public libraries will be looking for when they are choosing between
Koha or some proprietary system. Should we be telling them "Nope, you
can't use the real Koha, but you can use this fork over here"? That
will not increase their confidence in choosing Koha, I suspect.

That said, I do think some principles should be applied:

- Strive to make even the country specific features as general as
possible, so that others can use them as starting points for similar
features.

- Strive to make the features as unobtrusive as possible.

And maybe, in time, the plugin system can be made powerful enough that
it can handle some or all of the country-specific features?

Thoughts?

Best regards,
Magnus Enger
Libriotech