"Foundational software" and Free Software [LWN.net]

From:		Micah Yoder <micah-AT-yoderdev.com>
To:		letters-AT-lwn.net
Subject:		"Foundational software" and Free Software
Date:		Sun, 30 Jul 2006 18:36:54 -0500

Hi,

I have become aware of some nonprofit organizations which are not only
rejecting Linux, but standardizing on the entire Microsoft stack -- Windows
Server, Exchange Server, Office, Outlook, SQL Server, etc -- all because of
one class of software: "Foundational software."

This software runs the entire database structure of the organization and has
special features for donor management and other things they need. One of
these products is Navigator by Serenic, which seems to be one of the more
popular, but there are others.

Obviously, something is very wrong here. Free Software is supposed to benefit
nonprofit organizations even more than businesses because, hypothetically,
they have less money for software.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand exactly what this software
does -- I have never set it up nor used it. But apparently it ties together
all the Microsoft servers and applications in a way that makes things easy
for these organizations.

My question, to which I would welcome answers in talkbacks, is do we have
members of the Free Software community who use and understand this software,
and what can be done about it?

I would not necessarily argue that said software *must* be Free Software, but
we do need to have a reasonable solution that ties together the similar Free
applications. If it itself is Free Software, fine.

One project that has shown some promise is GNU Enterprise (
http://www.gnuenterprise.org ), but its progress seems slow right now.

In any case, a project to implement this class of software with Free tools
seems a necessary step to achieving World Domination.

Micah

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"Foundational software" and Free Software

Posted Aug 3, 2006 9:37 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

Microsoft is currently advertising a competition to design systems using Office 2007 (and thus by implication the entire Microsoft stack) for charities. Pick your charity, come up with some excuse for them to use say, Excel Services and PowerPoint to remotely generate Word documents and win prizes.

All stage winners receive some HP hardware, a single user license for Office 2007 (practical cost to Microsoft being nill) and PR for the designer and their charity. The ultimate winner receives the opportunity to work on the actual implementation of the design alongside paid (Microsoft?) engineers and it will be donated to the charity, everyone else is encouraged to complete their own implementation and badger the charity to use it (after all it's free, so long as you ignore the hardware and licensing costs which could be > $1000/ seat).

So in summary: Looks like charity work, actually an opportunity to force cash-strapped organisations to pay for upgrades to software they probably don't need. You can bet it's a tax write off too.

"Foundational software" and Free Software

Posted Aug 4, 2006 12:30 UTC (Fri) by emk (guest, #1128) [Link]

Charitable organizations need various sorts of specialized software to track donors, print mailing lists, and so. There's some pretty nice packages in the proprietary world, including several from small vendors.

Most of these programs could be replaced by a straightforward Rails application, at least for the smaller non-profits.

Larger foundations would presumably also need grant-tracking software and pretty decent accounting support.

"Foundational software" and Free Software

Posted Aug 4, 2006 15:11 UTC (Fri) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]

Probably not *just* Rails .... I would think that it would need to include some kind of OpenOffice extension to make it *really* sweet.

As for larger accounting needs, how close would the LinuxCanada offering or SQL Ledger be to what they need?

But again, it probably needs to be more than that. It needs to tie into the standard desktop tools to be as efficient as it is in the MS world. What I'm wondering is whether we have community members who understands how all this should work.

-- Micah (letter submitter)

"Foundational software" and Free Software

Posted Aug 4, 2006 17:35 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Free Software is supposed to benefit nonprofit organizations even more than businesses because, hypothetically, they have less money for software.

Its still quite controversial whether free software requires less money than nonfree software. The goals the Free Software Foundation, keeper of that term, talk about don't include making software accessible to poor people.

When I think of organizations particularly suited to free software, I think of governments, academia, and large organizations. The big success stories I hear of are from organizations that have engineers on staff.

"Foundational software" and Free Software

Posted Aug 8, 2006 13:51 UTC (Tue) by wilck (subscriber, #29844) [Link]

Yet nonprofit organizations are a valuable target not because they're poor (many of them actually aren't) but because they have a moral standing. We do think that free software is morally better than proprietary software, don't we?

I believe that many nonprofits don't like using Microsoft products, but they are no different than other people: At the end of the day they need to have their work done, and they will go for the solution that is easiest to set up and nicest to work with.

It is unfortunate that this market niche is occupied by small companies who build on the MS stack. No doubt that the building blocks are all there in the free software world - we 'just' need some people who integrate all that into a nice package and make it easy and smooth to work with.

"Foundational software" and Free Software

Posted Aug 10, 2006 19:02 UTC (Thu) by hazelsct (guest, #3659) [Link]

Indeed. You'd think vendors would realize that with a free stack, they could make more money for the whole system. But that would really work better for non-free software vendors.

What does e.g. Greenpeace use?

"Foundational software" and Free Software

Posted Aug 10, 2006 19:54 UTC (Thu) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]

Exactly, thanks for saying what I meant more eloquently than I said it. :)

The question is, how do we get people started in putting these building blocks together? Start another free software project? Petition the current players to build free-software friendly versions? Other???

"Foundational software" and Free Software

Posted Aug 11, 2006 9:16 UTC (Fri) by wilck (subscriber, #29844) [Link]

Ideally, a few well-known non-profits would realize the benefits (economically and ethically) of a free software stack and fund a developer or two (or a startup or whatever) to get something going, instead of buying expensive proprietary stuff. I am certain that would stir up good press coverage, like the City of Munich did.

Other organizations might follow suit quickly if the outcome is a good product.

Organizations such as the EFF should have good contacts to other non-profits. I wonder if they couldn't convince some to switch to free software.

"Foundational software" and Free Software

Posted Aug 14, 2006 21:16 UTC (Mon) by cbm_1571 (guest, #39879) [Link]

The "foundational software" described in the letter is ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software; it is definitely essential to World Domination. I had not heard of GNU Enterprise, but Compiere is another such system which also integrates CRM (Customer Relationship Management), a rapidly growing field. See http://www.compiere.org/. Note that http://www.compiere.org/support/install/installServer.html lists Oracle as a system requirement for the server, but see http://www.e-evolution.com.mx/postgre.html, which discusses running Compiere on PostgreSQL.

Users of an ERP system often find a reporting tool, and here again there is a libre offering: Datavision (see http://datavision.sourceforge.net/).

PS. I am amazed to finally see a topic on LWN.net on which I feel qualified to post something beyond agreement.