[Koha-devel] Country-specific forks?

[Kyle Hall]

Totally agree with this. All we need to do is imagine where we want Koha to
be pluggable! So far we have the ability create Report/Tool plugins,
arbitrary file to MARC conversion plugins, and I also have submitted a
patch to make EDIFACT pluggable ( once it gets it ). The first step is to
know what behavior needs to be modified, then make that behavior pluggable.
It's almost a chicken or the egg issue. I suppose what we need to do is
watch for new patches for very region specific features ( such as Norwegian
patron DB ) and suggest a path to plug-ability rather pushing the code
itself into Koha.

Kyle

http://www.kylehall.info
ByWater Solutions ( http://bywatersolutions.com )
Meadville Public Library ( http://www.meadvillelibrary.org )
Crawford County Federated Library System ( http://www.ccfls.org )
Mill Run Technology Solutions ( http://millruntech.com )

On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 5:24 AM, Julian Maurice <julian.maurice at biblibre.com
> wrote:

> +1 to "one Koha to rule them all"
> +1000 to a more powerful plugin system!
> Having a plugin system to build custom tools and reports is great, but I
> think we could (and should) go further.
>
> Le 11/02/2016 10:38, Magnus Enger a écrit :
> > 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
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org
> > http://lists.koha-community.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel
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> >
>
>
> --
> Julian Maurice <julian.maurice at biblibre.com>
> BibLibre
> _______________________________________________
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>
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