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Nonprofit technology vendors need to ensure that nonprofits can access and use their data easily and transparently, in any way they need. Nonprofits need to know what possibilities exist and how to position themselves to take advantage of openness. Keep up to date on the latest by following the NTEN Connect blog.

2010 NTC Preview: Gregory Heller on Working with Open Source Software

Gregory Heller, CivicActionsGregory Heller, CivicActionsNot long ago, open source software was seen by most as the choice of fringe geeks with political motivations. Either the Grammys and the White House are now run by fringe geeks, or there's been a groundswell of open source adoption. Gregory Heller and I know it's the latter. Grammy.com and Whitehouse.gov are Drupal sites. CiviCRM got great scores in NTEN's Data Ecosystem Report.

Open source is now mainstream.

Of course, mainstream as it is, working with open source software is different than working with proprietary software. There are challenges -- and benefits -- which Gregory Heller, a strategist at CivicActions, will explore in his session, "Working with Open Source Software and Vendors" at the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

Check out our full conversation:


Open Source Is Dead! Long Live Open Source!

Holly Ross, NTEN

That's right, I said it.

What I really mean is that open source, as we knew it, is dead. Over the last decade, what we've been talking about when we say "open source" is "open code" -- a set of zeroes and ones that we can configure to our heart's desire.

But, have you ever implemented an open source solution? We have here at NTEN. We use all kinds of open source tools, including our content management system, Drupal. Sure, it's highly customizable -- by a highly trained staffer, or a highly paid consultant. The code was free, but we paid consultants tens of thousands of dollars to get our implementation up and running.

To me, open source code isn't necessarily any better than proprietary code. The costs, in time and money, are just placed elsewhere. The old arguments for open source software adoption are dead to me.

But please: promise to read the rest of this before you start sending me hate mail.


"Live Together, Die Alone"*

Michelle Murrain, NOSI

For years and years -- basically, as long as software has been purchased by nonprofit organizations -- the basic model has been: a nonprofit organization pays a fee (sometimes rather large) to a software maker for a copy of software to install on your desktop or server to do a particular task, whether it be tracking donations and constituents, tracking clients, running campaigns, or the like.

What this meant was that each individual organization spent thousands -- or tens, or hundreds of thousands -- of dollars a year to implement software for their organization. The economics of that form of IT investment are hard to manage in a climate where the survival of nonprofits is increasingly endangered, and many are closing or merging.

But other models exist -- namely implementing, investing, and collaborating in open source software.