To the uninformed nonprofit, these shortlists do more harm
than good. They represent an extremely skewed look at the
software world.
I say this because a few years ago it was safe to look at
companies that were financially stable, produced releases on
fixed schedules, and had a business "reputation".
You could select the best from this pool and that was it,
because there was simply no other model.
However, the open source / social source movement has grown
in the past few years, and open source projects frequently
grow far faster than commercial projects. Let alone their
undeniable viability in the business / commercial world,
open source projects are ideally suited for nonprofit
applications. Open source projects like CivicSpace also tend
to have *far* better support for both individuals and
organizations, for free, than "established"
corporations like Microsoft or Apple.
However, they fail this requirement, stated on that site:
"Our added value is to present this
"short-list" of products that are developed by
fiscally stable corporations that provide excellent support
and long-term development strategies."
Drupal is not a "fiscally stable corporation"
...it's not a corporation at all. At the same time, it has
more development hours / maturity than most commercial
competitors, and is certainly growing faster than any
commercial product due to its (literally) thousands of
developers. Mambo, Wordpress, CiviCRM, and Plone are other
examples. They also offer the immense benefits of avoiding
vendor locking, of open APIs (interoperability, which is the
hallmark of the new web) and freely available source code
(flexibility).
Similarly, the overwhelming majority of nonprofits I've
consulted for have been best served by the MySQL database,
which isn't even listed as an option on the form.
I don't see the utility of that shortlist to the nonprofit
or even the business community; it caters to those that have
yet to hear of community developed software. Organizations
that produce higher level summaries of the software
development world should be more aware (and more
responsible), and should play a leading role in education
their audiences in this regard; otherwise it's hard to take
them seriously.
My $0.02.
? Dave.
--
Dave A. Chakrabarti
Director of Programs
Grassroots.org
-----original message-----
>>Due to the number of accounting and business systems
available, selecting the right one can become an
overwhelming job. When you complete this form, we will give
you at least one recommendation for a system that may meet
your needs and budget. To save time, please complete all
fields. We may need to contact you for more details. <https://www.2020software.com/assistance/selection.asp?
>
>>
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