[Koha-devel] RM for 2.4 [news from france]

[Paul POULAIN]

Chris Cormack a écrit :
> Hi all
> I was having a think the other night, about possible candidates for release
> manager for 2.4.
>
> Id like to suggest Joshua from NPL and Liblime. If he's willing of course.
> I think its important to share the release manager duties around. Paul has
> done a great job but I think it would be nice to let him concentrate on
> programming for a while and let someone else take over the management role
> for the next big release.
>
> Joshua has been involved with Koha for quite some time, and I think that
> because he doesnt come from a programmer background would bring some
> new/different skills to the release managers role.
>
> Any thoughts/suggestions/other nominations?

Hi Chris & koha-devel mailing list,

Your mail was interesting. However, before choosing anyone, i wanted to 
give you some informations (from France) :
* SAN ouest provence. It's a large "médiathèque" (= french library with 
multimedia, not only paper books), as large as Nelsonville in fact, 
which means large for france.
* Ineo is a large -french & european- company that is involved in 
library world. They have something like 70 employees, 25M€ income each year.

I was with them in Nelsonville last month.
The result of this trip (apart from meeting in real life stephen, owen & 
joshua that was really great) was that SAN decided definetly to go with 
Koha.
And that's a very very very important news (not sure to have permission 
to announce it officially, but announcing it anyway ;-) )

For many reasons. First of all, in France, they will give a very big 
boost to Koha reputation (that is already good it seems !)
Second, they plan to add some (many) features to Koha. They have 
dedicated 3 (yes, three) developpers for this. I'll add them in koha dev 
list in a few minut (they gave me sf nicknames yesterday : btoumi, 
hpassini, alaurin). I'll suggest them to introduce themself here (none 
of them three were in Nelsonville)

What i'll request is to write what they will add & publish it ASAP. In 
fact, i/we already have written some pages (in french) about that. Still 
has to be completed & translated. But should arrive soon.

What will Ineo do in this matter ? Ineo, as a large company, will help 
SAN to go to Koha. So, they will coordinate dev of new features, help 
them migrating, teach...
More than this, Ineo answered an RFP from a french university (Angers. I 
think Nicolas Morin reads this list, but he can't say anything on this 
topic & I can't ask him anything either). They will probably answer RFP 
from another university (Antilles, french too but closer from US than 
france)
This means Ineo want to appear as a major company in Koha-project. My 
opinion is that the best way for them to appear is... to take the role 
of Release Manager.
That's an important thing for another reason. Ineo is not known in the 
OSS world yet, so, taking this role would be the "ticket" for them, 
imho, to prove they want to play a fair game.

They still don't have decided officially. But that should arrive very 
very very soon. I cc Francois Laurent Contenay (he was in nelsonville) & 
could be dedicated to this role by Ineo. Once again, that is not an 
official information, just to warn you.

So, the next question is : who, from Joshua or Ineo would be the best RM ?
My opinion is that Joshua has more experience in Koha, but there are 
many other reasons that make me prefer Ineo :
- With frenchies (once again ;-) ) on the top of developper list (me, 
henri damien, sylvain machefert -for ensmp-, SAN, Ineo), it's easier to 
have ppl with the same working hours. Coordinating would be easier. We 
just have to be very very careful not to work only with/for frenchies, 
but stay a world-wide project. That would probably be our main risk (not 
to be careful enough).
- SAN ouest provence has a deadline : they want Koha to be ready on 
January, 1st. And Ineo don't want them to fail (because Ineo want to be 
able to say to futures libraries : look, Koha is great, we are 
koha-experts) It means we need a Release Manager that can work heavily 
on head. Even 24/7 if needed.

So how could we "use" Joshua ? He answered the question himself :
> My primary concern with 2.4 will be Quality Assurance both in existing
> code and any new code that is committed.

Great, we have a QA manager volunteer. That's what we still lacks.

Let me know your opinion/reactions.
--
Paul POULAIN
Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres
responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)