Supported Open Source

I’m at an interesting intersection in my career path. I just concluded eight years at a small, statewide health care reform nonprofit in Massachusetts called Community Partners. I was Technology & Strategy Director there. Like so many orgs around us, we went under a month ago due to the bad economy. Though I am sad to lose my wonderful co-workers, it was coming for a long time, so I was somewhat prepared. A long time ago, other organizations and foundations started asking me lots of technology questions. This has naturally parlayed into consulting.

At this juncture where I have a sense of what it's like to work in a small org and am also looking at and helping larger orgs and foundations to make decisions about tech and use it in smart ways, I’m thinking a lot about something I call "supported open source."

"How do I choose a CMS?" is one of the most frequent questions I get. "Should I go with a closed but well-supported system or should I venture out into the Badlands of Open Source?" There is another way! That is supported open source.

The perception is often that if you choose open source—even if you hire additional expertise to initially build your site—you have to have skills in-house to keep it going after launch. I think the perception that you're on your own with open source is one of the barriers to its adoption for many businesses and nonprofits. But there are companies and consultants that will stick around, long after your site is launched, to give you the help and support you need. And there are different ways of doing this based on your org's budget.

At Community Partners, we ran things on a shoestring. I build web sites, but I don't write custom PHP code. When we wanted to use a profile module to collect contact information from users on our Drupal site and sync it with our Access mailing list database (yes, I know... Old Skool...), I found the module. It didn't work right. This functionality was a priority for us, though. Luckily, we maintained a contractual relationship with a Drupal consultant who would help us out with our site when our budget allowed. We only paid him to help us when something was broken, or when we wanted a new feature we couldn't implement ourselves and we had the funds to do it.

Having someone you can pay to give you support only when you need it is clearly cheapest way to go. If you're rolling in money, however, having a company on-call 24-7 to support you with anything you need is the other end of the spectrum. And everything in between exists. I want to disclose here that at present, I have a paid relationship with a consulting firm called OpenIssue LLC, which offers a spectrum of services for open source CMS platforms. I am working with them because I am becoming increasingly convinced that supported open source is has some serious advantages for our sector.

I am dogmatic about not being dogmatic, and the needs and mission of an org should always determine what technology they choose, not the other way around. You're never married to a piece of software and you should change platforms if and whenever it serves you. But particularly during this time of economic uncertainty, there is something comforting to me about software that's being developed by a worldwide brain trust. Open source software can't be yanked out from under you if funds (temporarily) disappear, or if a contract expires, because we all own it.

Though this community code base can be messy, open source development specialists know how to clean it up for you. So you get that worldwide scope of innovation, plus the focused attention on your org's particular needs. For orgs that want to stay innovative but don't always have cash flow, this can be a great solution. Ongoing support can be stopped and re-started as needed when there are budget troubles.

I know of a few companies out there that explicitly offer ongoing support for open source platforms. My fave among these is PICnet. Non-Profit Soapbox is designed to be an affordable, fully hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) way for nonprofits to build sites quickly and easily in the Joomla! CMS. PICnet has been around for a long time, and honestly I don't know why more companies aren't offering open source SaaS for nonprofits. Seems like a great idea to me. Here are a couple more companies that offer ongoing support:

• Community IT Innovators (CITI)
• Jazkarta

I predict more of these companies will emerge in the coming year, and I think it will be a great leap forward for our sector. Do you know of a company or a consultant that offers ongoing support for open source software platforms? If so, I'd love to know about them. Please add them in the comments.