[Methodios] Welcome

[Milos R. <mi...@gm...>]

In this moment three of us (Vladimir, Wendall and me) are subscribed
to this list. It would be good to talk about this project here so new
developers can see our ideas about Methodios. (This means that
Vladimir and I should not talk on the Serbian list :) even it is more
easy to us. Also, I hope that Wendall, as well as new developers,
would forgive to us our bad English :) )

I added you as developers of the project. I think that Wendall is
familiar with SF interface etc., so I gave to him all rights for
technician administration. The only think I didn't give is general
admin role, but I think that it shouldn't be a problem after month or
two of our work. Vladimir is general admin, but I think that he needs
to become familiar with SF interface to start to carry about
technician issues. So, permissions are not a problem.

It would be nice that all of us say a few words about themselves so we
can know something about each other.

I am Milos Rancic, 31 years old; I am living in Belgrade, Serbia. I am
Unix admin for a six years (and Unix user for a ten years). I am
finishing studies in general linguistics.

And about software:

The primary goal is to make easy to administrate (for the beginning,
the goal is to make it easy to administrate for Unix admins :) ), easy
to extend/upgrade/port, robust and reliable librarian software.
GNU/Linux, Python and PostgreSQL should be enough (for the beginning)
of the technical conditions to make something like that.

As I see, we have two goals at the start of the project:

1. The most important is to create papers about the project. We
(Vladimir and me) have some documentation (in Serbian, which we should
translate into English), but I think there are a lot of documentation
about librarian standards on Internet, too. In this sense, we need a
number of persons who know how to organize librarian software; just
"software" or just "librarian" is enough for the beginning because I
don't think that there are a lot of people who knows both. (So, I
opened "job request" at SF and Wendall contacted me.) Different ideas
are welcome.

2. Even we should not concentrate on writing code now, we should make
some small software for the beginning: engine in Python/PostgreSQL and
web interface in PHP (or web interface in Python, too?). Just to show
that librarian software is not so complicated for the basic usage.
That code should not be a kind of basics for the future. If it would
be possible to use something from that code -- great; but we should
not limit ourselves to code which would be made without good plan.

And some logistic notes:

1. We have some servers on Internet. SF is not the only place for
development. We can test it on servers which I rent in USA.

2. I'll try to involve people from National Library of Serbia. Three
years ago director of that library promised me that he will give to me
logistic help: at least, he promised that he will dedicate some
librarians to the project. But, as more librarians (and libraries) are
involved in this project we would have better conditions to make good
software. If someone of you have contacts with libraries and
librarians which want to be involved in the project, let he call them.

I think I said everything for the beginning. I want to hear what do you think :)