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One size fits all?

Harish Rao of echoditto suggests he wants to see a one size fits all system for progressives that is inexpensive, easy to use, and "does content management, blogging/podcasting, credit card processing/fundraising, bulk email management, event management, metrics & reporting, CRM, and voterfile management (yes, all of these things should be integrated) properly." Of course, CivicSpace has already been moving in that direction, and Polycot has been doing some CivicSpace installs for some clients where our usual custom development approach might be overkill. However I have a different perspective from Harish. I posted this comment:

I'm with Jason Lefkowitz on this. We've had several conversations over the last two years with potential resellers who wanted Polycot to build a one size fits all solution, however this is one of the very things we dislike about the proprietary/shrinkwrap approach to software: in trying to market systems that meet the demands of many potential users, they create bloat and incorporate additional complexity, and there are inevitably pieces of their systems that are below par.

What's great about working with Open Source tools is that you can find and integrate best of breed solutions - and rather than paying a huge sum to Microsoft for some suite of bloatware, a nonprofit or small company can pay a developer/integrator to build a custom system that includes the best applications to meet whatever requirements were defined - and the system can be focused on the specific needs of the organization.

jon posted this at 6:33 PM
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What's great about working with Open Source tools is that you can find and integrate best of breed solutions - and rather than paying a huge sum to Microsoft for some suite of bloatware, a nonprofit or small company can pay a developer/integrator to build a custom system that includes the best applications to meet whatever requirements were defined - and the system can be focused on the specific needs of the organization.

Well, I'd have to say that pretty much sums it up.

Posted by: Nick Lewis | January 26, 2005 10:39 PM

Glad to see I'm not the only one who feels this way :-)

Why do so many technologists say they "get" Open Source, and then proceed to run off and ignore everything we have learned from it?

The only question now is whether anybody at EchoDitto (or indeed, any other of the vendors in that space) are listening...

Posted by: Jason Lefkowitz | January 28, 2005 11:07 AM

It's easy to lust after the "total integration fantasy" but I have to agree -- it's just not worth it. And at ONE/Northwest, we're listening.

We've been working hard on stitching together open-source (and sometimes not-so-open) solutions for the grassroots enviros we work with. We've found that Plone (http://www.plone.org) is pretty amazing glue for the center, and we slap a variety of other stuff around it as the specific needs of our projects dictate. Plus, because Zope is a pretty powerful general purpose web-app platform, we can use the same bag of tricks to build tools that don't look or act like CMS-type sites. (Think web-based collaboration tools!)

Posted by: Jon Stahl | February 5, 2005 3:52 AM