Donovan Lambright
, Automation Librarian
LibLime
, the best known company providing support for the open source ILS Koha , recently announced plans for Koha Enterprise. Mark Ranum, Director of Plum Creek Library System , has provided a great summary of the controversy sparked in the library community by this action and graciously gave me permission to post it here:
The announcement of LibLime’s Koha Enterprise product on September 11 was a shock to many of us expecting more “open” access to this open source product.
LibLime Announces LibLime Enterprise Koha
Since that announcement, there have been several articles and dozens/hundreds of comments on what this means for potential customers who were waiting for Koha to be consortia-ready. The Library Journal article linked below and the two commentaries from Marshall Breeding and Kathryn Greenhill give the best of these perspectives so far.
Library Journal--LibLime's "Enterprise Koha Prompts Frank Conversations on Open Source Issues
Kathryn Greenhill--The Koha fork and being the change you want to see
Marshall Breeding--An open letter to the Koha community
The prospect of a forked codebase and transparency of Koha open source modules clearly represents potential problems for a community of users who do not want to be limited to the LibLime business model.
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