Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding, the path for big, boring improvements

There seems to be general agreement that by now, Koha could do with some big, boring improvements:

• Getting fully ready for persistance, to be able to run under Plack or something similar.
• Move to more object oriented code and perhaps an ORM, like DBIx::Class.
• Extend unit tests coverage.

There is also agreement that no library wilb probably ever be crazy enough to fund something like this.

But could there be another way, through crowdfunding? "We need to do some boring fixing, if you or your library could contribute $10/$100/$1000 it would really help" sort of thing.

Is this something worth seriously considering? Would anyone be willing to take on the task of outlining the scope of such a project, quantifying what is needed, receive the money and do the work (or subcontract it out to others)?

This meeting should probably not say yes/no to the idea, but maybe yes/no to considering it further? --Magnus 14:05, 6 March 2013 (EST)

+1000 for this idea. I already have started something in France, and need help to go further. I also suggest to add this topic to KohaCon13 --Paul Poulain 03:23, 7 March 2013 (EST)

(Paul, continuing) what I've started in France is a document (in french) explaining to libraries what should be done. It contains exactly what you've written. I've sent this document to Kohala NPO. Until now, it had no effect, (and I haven't tried to go further). But I'm convinced the internal work that should be done now to have a Koha ready for the next 10 years will never be done without proper funding. And no single library will ever fund it too. I'll add that my feeling is that we're speaking of x00 000USR here (with x>1 !) if we want to do all what could/shoud be done.