Chris Cormack

Chris helped establish an openly maintainable alternative for essential library operations and then supported its reliability through release maintenance and patch review. New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner identifies Koha’s reach as more than 18,000 libraries; that scale belongs to the wider project, while the founding and maintenance contributions are individually documented.

Chris Cormack was an original developer of Koha, the open-source library system created in Horowhenua to provide an openly maintainable alternative for essential library operations. Following that initial development, release-maintenance contributions, patch reviews and quality-assurance work helped sustain the platform's reliability as Koha expanded to reach more than 18,000 libraries internationally.

Based in Wellington, Chris works as Kaihuawaere Matihiko at Catalyst IT and He Māwhitiwhiti Matihiko ki te kākahu o Hine-Raraunga at Te Kāhui Raraunga. Ongoing open-source software commitments sit alongside leadership in Māori digital and data governance.