[Koha-devel] RFC for a really new stuff : sharing data worldwide

[Paul Poulain]

Ladies & gentlemen,

We're competing more and more against providers that promote a "cloud 
multi-tenant LMS".
Koha is a cloud application (and it is since 2000, long before cloud is 
born).
What does "multi-tenant" mean ? It mean that you'll get access to many 
resources that are shared worldwide.

I think that the "multi-tenancy" is a way for proprietary vendors to 
lock-in their customers [1]. But the idea of having a worldwide database 
for some informations is interesting and relevant. Proprietary vendors 
take care of updating this database. Open Source projects are not 
working centrally, so we must find another way of creating and 
maintaining such a database.

With this thing in mind, BibLibre has decided to sponsor an intern + 
some internal resources for next summer dedicated to a project dedicated 
to sharing data between koha instances worldwide.

I wrote a 1st draft of RFC and I'd like to have your feedback: 
http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/SharingDatasBetweenKohas_rfc

If this project is successful, in the automn version of Koha, we may see 
a way to share worlwide data between all Koha libraries !

[1] if you're a proprietary vendor and are reading this: I don't mean 
it's the only reason for multi-tenancy.

-- 
Paul Poulain, Associé-gérant / co-owner
BibLibre, Services en logiciels libres pour les bibliothèques
BibLibre, Open Source software and services for libraries