21 April 2023, 15:16

Hello,

At this time of the year, we typically announce a new version of Mahara. We have completed the work for Mahara 23.04, but have decided to pause on its public release. This post outlines the reasons for this decision and invites all community members to engage with us on resetting the foundations for the sustainable future of Mahara.

Catalyst has been the primary development company and maintainer of the Mahara project for the past 16 years. Over this period Catalyst has funded a dedicated team responsible for the bi-annual release of new features; the provision of updates to existing versions (particularly for security and other high importance bug fixes); and leading on community support.

Over this time, the Mahara community has benefited hugely from the investments made by Catalyst's clients in funding new features and bug fixes that have been pushed regularly to the open source project. We also acknowledge that selected Mahara Partners and long-term project supporters outside of Catalyst have provided code contributions and translation support in particular. However, the majority of the global community is not involved in regular project code contribution or funding.

In the past, we have tried different ways to generate co-funding for the project, the Catalyst team, and supporting infrastructure, but have now reached the point where Catalyst can no longer bear the lion's share of these costs. It is for this reason that the Mahara project team has elected to pause the public release of 23.04. We will instead invest time in exploring how to best offer Mahara services that distribute the costs more equitably across our global community.

Invitation to discuss the future of the project

We believe that the use of open source software enables the greatest level of freedom, collaboration, and innovation. Catalyst as our primary supporter firmly believes in the need for an open source portfolio offering. Its commitment to Mahara as an open source project does not change. We do however need to explore a more commercial model of its delivery to ensure we can maintain its feature rich, stable, and secure future.

Over the coming weeks, as we take the next steps to develop this commercial offering, we will invite you to share your views on what is important to your use of Mahara. If you would like to join focus groups to help in this process please get in touch.

Please view the 'Questions and answers' page for questions you may have and email us for any others.

Thank you

Kristina

03 May 2023, 12:12

Hello,

We'd like to invite you to come along to our community consultation sessions this month to discuss the future of Mahara as you may have some questions and would like to share your opinion. Three sessions are planned to cover different time zones:

• Session 1: 16 May 2023, 14:00-15:00 NZST (Australia, Pacific, East Asia)
• Session 2: 17 May 2023, 19:00-20:00 NZST (Africa, Europe, Asia)
• Session 3: 18 May 2023, 7:00-8:00 NZST (Africa, Europe, Americas)

You can also provide feedback via email if you prefer or reply in this forum thread.

Thank you

Kristina

23 May 2023, 21:16

Hello,