COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION AND CONTRIBUTION TO KOHA OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE PROJECT.

Vimal Kumar V.Technical Assistant

Mahatma Gandhi University Library

Kottayam

Democratic Alliance for Knowledge Freedom State Meet26-28 September 2014

Cochin University of Science and Technology.

Fallacy of FOSS uptake In IndiaThe habit of looking at FOSS as an endless well to

draw from

Little active contribution

The constant worry of livelihood

Tendency of creating ivory towers

Isolated islands of development

Reluctance to share knowledge

Lack of inter-disciplinary approach

We have to LOCALISE

KOHA COMMUNITY AND OPENNESS

GPL License,Busy email discussion forum,Community participation from various countries,Public source code view.

FOSS and peer review

"given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"

CATHEDRAL MODEL: Code developed between releases is restricted to an exclusive group of software developers.

BAZZAR MODEL: code is developed over the Internet in view of the public.

Open Core vs FOSS

Open Core is like Dr. Frankenstein's monster, it will turn on its own creator ultimately.

Example of an Open Core Project

INVOLVEMENT IN DISCUSSION FORUMHabit of posting in Discussion forum?

58% 42%

Koha discussion forum response time

Busy and responsive email discussion

'Karma' is NOT living offwhat you did YESTERDAY

Like “recurring deposit” - more you do, moreyou grow

Like mobile “top-up” - re-charge from time totime or your 'Karma' balance goes down overTime.

Higher the 'Karma' → Greater Visibility inProject → Greater responsibility → PROJECTLEADERSHIP

'Karma' means EVERYTHING counts● Did you find a bug and report it?● Did you fix a bug and posted the solution?● Did you help in brainstorming a project?● Did you answer new users' questions on mailing

lists?● Did you design logo and artwork?● Did you help maintain the website?● Did you organise a local event around the

project?● Did you translate the project into your own

language?● Did you code?

'Karma' means even the 'squirrel' is credited

But we are NOT Programmers!

You are absolutely correct!

A majority of developers of Koha hold advancedLIS degreesOnly 5% of LIS professionals dabbling withcoding would be good enough

What about the rest ?

USERS → Power Users

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Users involvement in FOSS development process.

Koha dashboard

CONCLUSION

Koha project offers lot avenues for cooperation,

Community support is very strong,

Need more training and awareness among LIS professionals and students ,

Need more cooperation between LIS professionals and developers community,

Government should frame policies to encourage the use Open Source software in libraries,

Courtesy

The ideas organized for the presentation based on discussion on 22 September 2014 with

Sri. Indranil Das Gupta.

He is an active computing technology enthusiast and user since 1987. He is one of the few Koha master code developers from India.

I have borrowed few slides from his presentation titled

“Of Dodos, 'Karma' & Free Software in the Library”

http://tinyurl.com/owpla28