One of the tightropes I must walk on as the current release manager for Koha is held taut by the tension between the necessity of maintaining boundaries with the code and the necessity of acknowledging that the code is not the first concern.
Boundaries matter. Not all code is equal: some is better, some is worse, none is perfect. Some code belongs in Koha. Some code belongs in Koha for lack of a better alternative at the time. Some code does not belong in Koha. Some code will stand the test of time; some code will test our time and energy for years.
The code is not primary. It is no great insight to point out that the code does not write itself; it certainly does not document itself nor pay its own way. Nor does it get to partake in that moment of fleeting joy when things just work, when the code gets out of the way of the librarian and the patron.
What is primary? People and their energy.
Enthusiasm is boundless. It has kept some folks working on Koha for years, beyond the impetus of mere paycheck or even approbation.
Enthusiasm is limited. Anybody volunteering passion for a free software project has a question to answer: is there something better to do with my time? If the answer turns into “no”… well, there are many ways in this world to contribute to happiness, personal or shared.
Caviling can be costly — possibly, beyond measure. One “RTFM” can eliminate an entire manual’s worth of help down the road.
On the other hand, the impulse to tweak, to provide feedback, to tune a new idea, can come from the best of intentions. Passion is not enough by itself; experience matters, can guide new effort.
It’s a tightrope we all walk. But the people must come first.
My meditation: what ways of interacting among ourselves conserves enthusiasm, and thereby grows it? And how do we avoid destroying it needlessly?
Conservation of enthusiasm by Galen Charlton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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