[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Firefox Remote XUL and future of StaffClient.

[Jason Stephenson]

On 09/05/2013 01:07 PM, Lazar, Alexey Vladimirovich wrote:
> 
> On 2013-08-29, at 08:01 , Jason Stephenson <jstephenson at mvlc.org>
> wrote:
> 
>> I am going to be brutally honest, because that is my role in the 
>> community. I don't think it is going anywhere until someone says, 
>> "Here's $50 000. Do it."
> 
> Are you talking about what it would cost to develop and maintain a
> modern high-quality web-based interface to replace all the
> functionality currently done in the staff client based on XUL? If so,
> I think your estimate is probably somewhat conservative. Your honesty
> is not brutal enough! ;)

I just pulled the numbers out of the air. I didn't actually sit down and
estimate what I think it would really take.


> 
> Lacking sponsors who are willing to pay now to solve a somewhat
> hypothetical future problem, another way to approach this issue would
> be to first get some general agreement that we would like to have
> something different from a XUL-based client at some point in the
> future, say 5 years, and start working in that direction. Absent a
> large upfront investment, but with a common vision, we could still
> get there in about the same amount of time. The existing client and
> whatever may be developed to replace it would still have to coexist
> for a long time for a phased transition to occur. I think the
> community has some experience with this type of a transition from
> JSPAC to TTPAC.
> 

That horse is waiting for burial. Someone who has the time needs to come
up with a plan, share it with the community, get feedback and buy-in and
get to work. We've know for at least three years now that XulRunner was
not going to last forever.



-- 
Jason Stephenson
Assistant Director for Technology Services
Merrimack Valley Library Consortium