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Open Source Database

Posted on 1 August 2006 at 1:13 pm
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  • Anonymous
    1 August 2006 at 1:13 pm #2521

    Hi All,

    Apologies if there is already a thread on this topic but I couldn’t see one.

    I wondered if anyone had any experience, good or bad, of using Linux/Open Source fundraising database solutions?

    We do have a lot of in-house technical expertise, particularly with Linux, so support is perhaps not so much an issue for us as it might be for other charities of our size. Our IT Manager is keen to give it a go.

    What do people who have experience think about the potential advantages or pitfalls of such an approach?

    Thanks

    Stephen

    Anonymous
    1 August 2006 at 2:09 pm #8718

    I wondered if anyone had any experience, good or bad, of using Linux/Open Source fundraising database solutions?

    It’s a subject that’s come up almost every time I’ve chatted to someone in IT who has to support Raiser’s Edge, but no actual products seem to have arrived yet! It does seem to be an ideal candidate for a cross-platform front-end for a MySQL database or similar, but my impression is that the big hurdles are getting the initial spec from fundraisers, who may be low on time for that sort of thing, and then the long haul of polishing and refining it for usability and the inevitable feature creep.

    I suspect that there are quite a few databases out these, all grown in-house, but too tailored to the charity to be worth taking public. Get the architecture right, and you do potentially have a broader pool of organisations that could help support development.

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