[software] OffstageArts and CiviCRM

[Dave Rolsky]

On Wed, 22 Oct 2008, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:

> I apologize that I've been ignoring Rapport, mainly because you had told
> me at one point that you weren't working on it and were recommending
> CiviCRM instead. ;)

This is Rapport 2 (thus the use of R2 in the repository). When I release 
it I'll just call it Rapport, though, because almost no one used the 
original.

I recently decided to start this because Rapport is outdated and hard to 
maintain, but I find CiviCRM's usability very poor. I did seriously 
consider switching my animal rights group from Rapport to CiviCRM, but 
when I thought about the effort of training them in on it, I decided 
against it. The goal for R2 is to make something with modern features 
(unlike the current Rapport) and a decent UI.

> If you are active on it again, this is a really important project for us
> to be paying attention to.  Do you already have a mailing list
> discussing its development, etc?

Not yet, as I'm the only one working on it. I just have the Mercurial repo 
at https://hg.urth.org:445/hg/R2/

I just put some instructions in the README on how to get the application 
running locally. It's not _too_ hard if you're comfortable installing Perl 
modules.

My guess is it'll need at least another 6 months of my (part-time) work 
before it's ready for use. My animal rights group will get to be the lucky 
beta testers.

>> Given how much money they're spending for things like Raiser's Edge
>> and similar products, I would imagine that there is a market for
>> something simpler and lower cost, especially for smaller orgs with
>> simpler needs that are simply unable to afford the big proprietary
>> services.
>
> I agree.  My concern here is the that Free Software becomes a bit of a
> ghettoized portion of the endeavor (AGPL licensing is probably helpful
> in this regard, if you are willing to consider it).

https://hg.urth.org:445/hg/R2/file/9d4851bc14d6/LICENSE ;)

However, I need to review all the Perl modules I'm using and make sure 
they're all dual-licensed under Artistic/GPL. If they're GPL-only I can't 
use them, which would be damn annoying. Fortunately, I'm the maintainer of 
a large chunk of them.

>> Of course, I'd love grant money too, but I'm not going to ask because
>> the project just isn't far enough along, compared to the other systems
>> being discussed, which are actually usable as-is.
>
> Would you like to see this group put its effort behind helping you to do
> Rapport?  If so, do you have a pitch for us?

I really don't feel it would be responsible for me to pitch something 
that's still in development versus various existing systems that work.

I _am_ scared as heck when I hear you guys talk about a mix of Perl and C 
where all the C files with hexadecimal names (DonorWare), though. I guess 
my only pitch would be that this is a new project, and I'm anal about 
maintainability and good coding practices.

I do think in the long run that maintainability is important, because it 
lowers the barriers to entry, and I have a hard time imagining something 
like DonorWare (as described by Mike(?)) attracting a vibrant community 
around it. It seems this is often a problem when a proprietary project 
goes free. No one who isn't getting paid wants to put up with its cruft.

Also, I know that some Perl folks are on this list, so maybe they'll like 
the fact that it's in very modern (aka Moose & Catalyst) Perl.


-dave

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