Even so, it wasn’t an easy decision to join. I still believe that RFID standards development would be better done in an open forum, but there doesn’t seem to be a perfect choice and I don’t think we can create one. BIC already has cross-sector support and seems much more open than the so-called “RFID Alliance”. Pragmatism was enough, this time, and so far BIC seems friendly and welcoming. I see that a larger service provider co-operative, OCLC (UK), is also a member, so hopefully that means it’s safe for co-ops.

I think most of the readers of this will be free software developers, koha users and/or members of other co-ops. So, I ask you, what do you think of this move? Leave me a comment on our blog – or email me if you prefer to keep it private.

So welcome to Koha-community.org which will mainly be about updates about new releases, support listings and the manuals until the previous website reflects the community again. Well done to all involved for getting it online so quickly!

Some librarians are asking “What will the acquistion of Liblime mean to Koha libraries?” but I’m wondering what does this mean for the Koha project?

Well, there’s still our co-op (established 2002) and the other older private Koha companies (Calyx, Katipo and so on), as well as the rest of the younger ones, so I think there’s still the motivation for a vendor-neutral non-profit group to host the project. Recent history has shown that it’s too painful if any one private company hosts it. It’ll be interesting to see how the recent private company deals help that work. If all goes well, a bright new day for Koha, as wizzyrea hopes.

On another level, I’m a bit disappointed that a theoretical Free and Open Source Software player (even if things like LibLime Enterprise Koha had muddied the water) has been sold to a mixed FOSS+proprietary player. I’m almost cross with Liblime’s owners for selling up, but I don’t know if that’s fair. Selling up is a fairly common exit move in private companies, so shouldn’t I expect it? Do librarians expect it? Is this why some seem reluctant to buy from start-ups which are still independent?

As you may know, TTLLP software.coop is in common ownership, so we can’t really be bought. This is a self-defence or legacy-guaranteeing mechanism for our cooperative, where our assets are pledged to other common ownership cooperatives if our corporation dies. I think it also has the fringe benefit that we’re a fairly safe home for things like trademarks.

This unbuyability means that I feel I’m watching the sales and cross-linking of our competitors from the sidelines, from a viewpoint more like Koha users than the other vendors, waiting for the dust to settle and the chips to fall where they may. Whatever happens there, software.coop will still be here.

Unsurprisingly, there have been a couple of new entrants into Koha support, although the Liblime-controlled Koha project website doesn’t show them yet and reportedly its “new support company” submission form has been broken for weeks, which is irritating.

Interesting co-op-y things are happening in the wider library systems world, too, with Karen Coombs going to work for the OCLC library cooperative and Polaris Library Systems workers buying the company although I’m not sure yet if they’re becoming a worker co-op or “merely” employee-owned. I suspect many of these announcements are timed for #alamw10 which is a big US library conference. Has anyone seen more co-op or Koha announcements which I haven’t spotted in the conference PR flood?

A full list of Koha Social Networks is on the wiki.

The repost of Tribute to Richard Rothwell came a fairly close second. Again, not something that the mainstream tech news covered. “the world is a sadder and lonelier place without him, and the rest of the world has lost one of its brightest stars.”

Top-placed technical item was HOWTO Apache httpd 2.2 PAM Authentication Modules which was a distant third. It was posted in late 2008, but I suspect that will keep getting viewers until everyone’s upgraded. It’s currently the top recipient of search engine traffic for the site.

Other technical stories in the top ten were Windows 7: Released with known critical bug in fifth, ssh security in sixth and Top 8 J2ME MIDP Applications in tenth place.

The only completely non-technical topic was the Cooperatives-SW Board and Housing Enquiry in ninth place.

Cross-over topics complete the ten with 2009 Software in the Public Interest Board Election in fourth place, New #ukgovOSS Action Plan in seventh and Meeting about forming a Koha Foundation in eighth.

Finally, I think the strangest three search phrases ending at my site this year are “spi bike week”, “request free t-shirt” and “will britannia building society demutualise“.

Happy New Year! Found any easter eggs in your web stats?

I was unable to attend yesterday’s #koha IRC general meeting because of the terrible state of mobile internet coverage in rural Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, where I was at the time. Apologies for not sending apologies beforehand, but I thought it would work. Mobile internet is so frustratingly patchy outside the big cities. It works, but not reliably when I’m moving fast, which seems like part of the point of “mobile”.

Once again, I’m surprised that the U2Com free wifi network still has only one London hotspot. It makes finding wifi in Bristol and Somerset so much easier (as well as attracting me to Bath Ales) and there was even a node in Manchester yesterday. Is there another free wifi network in London that I don’t know about? The Londonist Free Wifi map doesn’t show if they’re in networks.

I think it applies to my recent RFID development work too: the public information is fluffy and you have to hunt or reverse-engineer most of the technical info, the supplier websites are painful and there’s almost no interaction.

In the past, I’d been factoring in something between 50 and 100% extra time when our co-op needed to coordinate with unknown non-co-ops. With RFID hardware work, it was well over 300% when I last calculated it and that’s even though there was one pretty helpful RFID supplier. This sort of nonsense is painful, slows development massively, could kill useful technologies at birth and re-emphasises my commitment to use Open Standards as much as reasonable.

Have other people got similar horror stories to share? Can we get savs’s Top 10 Crimes under the noses of some high-profile people?

A SirsiDynix Corp lobby paper against Open Source technologies escaped onto the internet. SirsiDynix is a competitor of our co-op with products that compete with Koha. They’re also interesting because Sirsi bought another competitor (Dynix), essentially stopped its product line (something near impossible with Free and Open Source Software like Koha) to replace it with its own and has ended up a messy lawsuit with Queens Borough Public Library as a consequence of that – all as I understand it.

Late last month, someone leaked SirsiDynix’s criticism of Free and Open Source Software which is missing references for key evidence and described on WikiLeaks as containing “possible libel per se against certain competitors”. The comments and links at thesecretmirror and code4lib wiki seem interesting dissections.

I feel that this document is taking advantage of an opportunity presented by the biggest promoters of FOSS library management systems not speaking about freedom. As you can see from some comments on thesecretmirror, it’s all about freedom. reflections » Missing the point: It’s time to talk about software freedom develops that point a bit more and gives a few links back to other statements of freedom which I’d not seen before.

Anyway, one of the points in the leaked document was that the US Department of Defense (DoD) restricts use of FOSS. Unluckily for SirsiDynix, on 16 October, a memo was published by the DoD CIO saying Defense: Open source software is more secure than commercial code. There’s some analysis by David Wheeler discussed on LWN.

Anyway, who would you believe about FOSS? An under-fire legacy private software competitor, or the Department of Defense? I don’t like either that much, but there’s not really a contest. DoD are willing to bet lives on it.

“Remember to vote for your choices in the final Koha foundation forming election before the poll closes on the 25th.

Turnout in the final Koha foundation forming election is lower than in the previous preliminary poll at this point. This is the poll which determines our actual choice. The previous poll was more of a survey to discover interests and inform the process of how to conduct the final election.

The links to the ballot are as follows.

English:

http://opensource.web2learning.net/limesurvey/index.php?sid=88794&lang=en

French:

http://opensource.web2learning.net/limesurvey/index.php?sid=88794&lang=fr

Pages linked from the Koha Wiki foundation forming options page, short link http://bit.ly/4AjYin , and discussions which we have had on the Koha mailing lists should inform you of the options.”

Go vote! In other news, there’s a bugfix release of koha-3.0.4.