[software] Call for evaluation of Donor.com

[Jim Brandt]

Josh Berkus wrote:
> Jim,
> 
>> If it was a toss-up, you might go for the "sure thing" of writing our 
>> own, but it's not a toss-up since even if the licensing doesn't come 
>> through on the schedule proposed, we are still up on something that's 
>> already functioning and we can operate on that system with very low 
>> cost. That gives us all more time to do the other stuff our 
>> foundations need.
> 
> Well, if it's not OSS, I don't know that it solves the problem.  Non-OSS 
> systems can change their terms dramatically when we least expect it. 
> Also, there's an ideological issue, as well as our inability to tweak 
> the software to work the way we want it.
> 

True. I was trying to handle some of these in the license terms, which 
our lawyer is still reviewing. There is no question about the terms 
issue, and that's a clear risk.

There's no denying the ideological issue, but for me I have a pragmatic 
problem of having to chose between managing the day-to-day donor issues 
or doing other stuff for TPF. Given how much needs to be done, my 
decision is to get something and focus on the other stuff, but that's 
just me. The fact that they use a bunch of open source mitigates it a 
bit for me, but I know that doesn't do it for everyone.

The issue of access to the source was going to be included in the 
license. The terms would allow us full source code access, on a 
dedicated hosted server, to tweak things to meet our needs. The other 
details we needed to resolve is the licensing around such changes, if 
they aren't operating under a clear OSS license.


-- 
Jim Brandt
The Perl Foundation
email: cbrandt at perlfoundation.org