[software] Outsourcing NPO Software Components

[Bob F]

The discussion of accounting and whether it's integrated in the NPO  
system or "outsourced" to another piece of software brings up a  
general issue.  Accounting is not the only thing I've tried to  
outsource in order to save costs in developing the software.  Other  
pieces have included:

  *) Editing Report Templates --- outsourced to OpenOffice.org and  
iReport.
  *) Composing bulk emails --- outsourced to your standard email client.
  *) Sending bulk emails --- outsourced to a bulk mail service.
  *) Accounting --- outsourced to some unspecified accounting system.
  *) Report display --- outsourced to a system's PDF viewer
  *) Sending individual emails --- outsourced to the email client

This does not count the dozens of more-tightly integrated third-party  
components (library) that any NPO will probably end up with.  In  
general, I prefer to use tightly-integrated third-party components  
before loosely-integrated components.

-- Bob