[software] Call for evaluation of Donor.com

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

While I am of course delighted to see the possibility of more
non-free/custom-in-house software released as Free Software, I think
it's premature to engage Donor.com's software in the order proposed.

Donor.com should make a release under a FLOSS license *first*, then the
steps you suggest can happen.  I have no interest in participating in a
process of investing extremely limited time into testing, evaluating,
receiving demos, and considering software that is not yet been released
as FLOSS.  By your calendar, we spend September-April using proprietary
software just to see if we like it.  If I were going to do that, I'd
license a copy of Raiser's Edge, which at least give me the opportunity
to figure what features it has we must target replacing.

Anyway, I hope that the resources of this effort don't get spent down
such rat-holes.  Our message to Mike should be: "Show us the source.
FLOSS is the standard way of doing software now.  You should do it,
too.  We'll welcome you into our community when you're ready."

> One caveat is that it doesn't do full accounting, just pre-accounting.

This isn't much different than CiviCRM, then?  Technically speaking,
other issues above aside, I would be hesitant to have a system that
doesn't have an auditable accounting system already implemented.  This
is why I have been so pushing toward an existing ERP package (although I
admit I still haven't read your message on that in detail yet).

Anyway, once Mike releases us the source under a Free Software and Open
Source license, and we'll all take a look immediately!
-- 

   -- bkuhn