I'm sure many of you are aware of Open Source and how it is changing the technological landscape. I just read this morning that there are going to be a few options for us in the next year or so. This will be a free database/modular system that will eventually include donor tracking, customer management, and ticketing.
The possibilities also include sharing information and trends among the various organizations that use this service. I think this is an exciting development for small and medium arts organizations who cannot afford expensive software that is out there. Read more about it HERE.
Open source does come with a cost. Though the open source community has been working relentlessly to make everything out-of-the-box user friendly, it always still requires some time to learn the system and how it works.
Mu Performing Arts currently uses Drupal to run it's web site. Drupal is an open source web engine. I think it has been great in many ways, but I've also had to spend quite a bit of time and money to learn the system.
The other thing about it is that they are constantly upgrading, so there is need for consistent upkeep and management if you want to keep up to date in order to use the latest features. There are some services that will keep your modules up to date for you. We use Advantage Labs to provide a managed hosting of our web site.
There are other open source options that I have been wanting to check out, such as using free Operating Systems such as Ubuntu, Open Office (a free office suite comparable to what Microsoft offers), and some others.
Rumor has it that these projects are now much more user friendly and streamlined to be compatible with most Microsoft office.
Google has been a big proponent of Open Source and, in some ways, we have them to thank for the growth in the movement. It brings a lot of freedom...which also gives us a lot of choices...some times too much.
Either way, I think it is the way of the future as far as technology goes.
This is a comment from Allie Micka regarding this post. I'm posting it in two parts:
ReplyDeleteThank you for mentioning Advantage Labs, which is my company. We work hard to find ways of sustainably contributing to Drupal and other open source tools, while sustainably providing ongoing support to web developers, nonprofits and companies alike.
While everything we develop for Drupal is made available for free, I'm still responsible for paying my employees' salaries every month, and for paying other expenses. This is a labor of love for all of us, as we could easily be earning twice as much as we do by NOT contributing anything back.
It's bankrupt to feel that you can benefit from the time and resources of skilled personnel without ever paying a cent. You'd think twice about buying your clothes at a store that didn't charge for its goods - I mean, surely someone, somewhere along the supply and distribution chain needs to eat and pay for goods! Even retailers that come as close as they come to zero (e.g. Walmart) do so by using questionable business practices that are arguably harmful to the economy at large.
While it's true that there's a fair amount of altruism and hobbyist support of open source, making sure that people can get paid for their work is what makes open source tick. Otherwise, only the interesting problems get solved but thankless work goes undone: support, documentation, bug fixes and maintenance are not things you willingly give up family time for.
It's also true that tools alone don't get the job done. Easier helps, but there's always a need for support, training and hand-holding.
Projects without a support infrastructure quickly go poof, because there are more "takers" than "givers." The thing that makes open source powerful is leverage. You can do
something that benefits *lots* of people at the same time, a developer can build a ecommerce system for, say, $50,000 and find a way to pay for it by making it work for 5,000 installations. Some of those 5,000 users can pay for improvements, financially or in-kind. It becomes more powerful and its install base grows to 10,000, which opens the door to even more resources.
Conversely, it might take less money - say $20,000 to build a one-off solution, but that entire cost is borne by a single entity. That one entity has to keep the fires burning and compete with the rapid growth of competitive offerings.
So, an open source solution is only as good as its install base. More importantly, it's only as good as the install base it has with enough resources to guarantee that its developers are interested in sticking around.
The Athena project looks really great, but I've seen its kind come and go many times: A well-meaning tool that targets a comparatively-small demographic that may not be able to sustain it directly. Starting off with a grant often means that they're thinking of development only, not of ongoing support, fostering a development community, or providing a business model that sustains it. See Civicspace for a recent example.
When these solutions fail, it's a huge disservice to users who have invested their time and sometimes money, and must now spend thousands to migrate into something sustainable. It's frustrating and costly for everyone.
Part II of Allie's response:
ReplyDeleteA larger install base is available when there are more overlapping goals. It may be tricky to get a few hundred struggling theaters to fund development for ecommerce ticketing, but with Drupal, you're letting 16,000 ubercart/ecommerce users focus on the nuts and bolts of commerce, while you fund a slick ticketing interface. There's similar
overlap for CRM, mailing solutions, community management and social networking - where you let the 'big guys' pay for many components, and you put your resources towards the last mile.
Advantage Labs has attempted to build a business model that directly reflects an open source economy: we provide as much service as we can to a growing community of users, but we charge enough for our time so we can be there tomorrow. Our surplus resources go into building open source solutions that we can field-test with our users. It's a lot like a cooperative funding model, where each new customer helps us all get closer to guaranteeing the availability of solutions that people need, but nobody has to cough up $50,000 by themselves.
Panacea toolsets come and go, but we really hope that people consider the big picture and make sure to support solutions well enough to be sure they're available for everyone in the long haul.