[Foundation-l] Open source CRM needed for Wikimedia

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 6/25/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> I won't comment on the specific question, but on the underlying
> Wikimedia policy issue.
[snip]
> Does that make sense?
>
> Best,
> Erik

I agree with Erik's position here, in general.

I'd like to add is that we should include consideration of two important axes.

1) The influence the software has on the outside world.

    Compare the impact of an internal house keeping app with the
impact of running Microsoft Office and sending out official foundation
documents in Word format. Non-free software solutions should probably
never be used for applications which land on the 'most impacting' side
of the spectrum. For example, we should never make official use of a
proprietary file format for official communication to our editors,
creating a barrier to entry for users of free software, even if there
is no good alternative available.

2) Critically to the critical path of our project's purpose.

   Compare the use of a proprietary software address book in the
office to storing the Wiki content in a proprietary format. This is
the distinction between 'involved with the content' and everything
else.

Various problems will have some position on these axis, for example,
Erik's OCR example is very much involved with the content, but is
almost totally invisible outside of the person using it. A CRM
solution is not involved with the content but has impact on a few more
people, although not widescale impact (Some on foundation staff and
perhaps volunteers; none on general readers, donors, or editors).
Paypal has significant impact on outsiders, but it's outside of the
content critical path (and webbased).