Stage 1 Function confirmed
July 2013
I am delighted to announce that funding has been secured to allow the most urgent work to commence on the Kete upgrade. This is all backend but will address the critical security flaws and *performance* issues due to running such an old version of Rails.
Stage 1 is a stripped down proposal and will cost $50k. This funding has been contributed by Digital NZ $20k, Te Horowhenua Trust $25k and Tauranga Libraries $5k.
The work will be carried out by a project team consisting of Andy Neale from Digital NZ, Joanne Dillon from Te Horowhenua Trust and Leith Haarhoff from Palmerston North who will work with Josh Forde from Rabid.
If you currently have a Kete please consider whether you wish to keep using it and if not, what you will replace it with if the upgrade work is not completed.
We are now seeking the remainder of the funding to complete the balance of the critical stage 1 work and invite all Kete Libraries to contribute to this project. Many of us have capital funding left as the end of the financial year draws in and Te Horowhenua Trust is happy to generate invoices for ‘Kete upgrade: stage 1, payment 1′ if that is helpful.
Kind regards,
Jo Ransom
Te Horowhenua Trust
Revised Proposal to Upgrade Kete with support of Digital NZ
June 2013
Work has been estimated for a budget of $50k. We have confirmed funding of at least $45k (subject to some approvals) already, if the proposed contribution of $20k from Digital NZ is approved. This budget seems prudent. We are inviting further contributions from the community and will invest these into further features as these come through.
All contributions will be invoiced to Horowhenua Library Trust who will provide project
governance for the development phase, contracting Rabid. We will invite users or National Library technical staff to contribute to governance of the project.
The Future of Kete: Proposal for Funding Support from New Zealand Public Heritage Organisations
March 2013
This document restates the value and vision of the Kete project. It is written to the community of Kete users and supporters of the project.
Kete is an immensely important open source software project that enables communities to store local digital resources and collaborate to organise and share them. It was conceived by
Horowhenua Library Trust and subsequently funded by a variety of other contributors in the New Zealand community. The time has come for a renewal, and we are seeking your financial
support for a major upgrade to the project.
Kete has achieved much and enabled innovations, unlocking the cultural heritage within our communities. The visionary concepts of collaboration, openness and sharing that Kete embodies are now becoming the norm of the modern web. However, the core software was developed in 2007. While pretty radical for its time, it is showing its age and users now demand a more modern and usable system. The positive aspect of this progress is that Kete’s values of collaboration are readily accepted and understood by modern software users.
Kete has much in its favour. The items it supports are extremely valuable – digital assets are often of immense historical and archival relevance.
The proposed project will deliver a major upgrade of the codebase. We aim to deliver a new Kete that is generally maintainable by existing IT staff without specialised experience of software development. We will mitigate obsolescence in the code and open the project to new developers. Without a concerted effort of work, support and discussion from the community of users, Kete is at real risk of becoming redundant.