Software-as-a-Service Without Crimes Against Freedom
Robin Sheat
Standard (30 minutes) on Thursday, 25 November 2010 15:30 - 16:00 in room Room 1
TAGS: Web & Online Technologies, Development Process & Project Management, Licensing, Strategy, Business Models, Case Studies
Koha is a ten-year-old Free Software library (as in books) management system. It started in New Zealand, but has now spread across the world, and is in use in thousands of libraries. Recently Catalyst IT has started providing MyKoha, a hosted version of Koha, to companies, schools, and libraries in NZ that do not want to or cannot deal with managing their own servers for it. It is important to us that we stick with the Free Software spirit while doing this, such as allowing easy access to the source code and the data that has been put into the system.
This talk covers what we did to make this work, what effects this has had on how we approach the development and deployment, and what it has meant for upstream developers and users. It will be covering both the technical aspects, e.g. packaging, along with the social elements, such as licensing and community interaction.
Robin Sheat
Developer
Catalyst IT Ltd.
I'm currently working at Catalyst IT on a couple of projects, but most busily at the moment is Koha. Primarily as a Perl developer, but also doing some of the systems work needed for the hosted Koha service. In the past, I've worked on a handful of Free Software projects, the most current of these being eMusic/J.