[Foundation-l] Open source CRM needed for Wikimedia

[Delirium]

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> The one thing I would add to this is that in terms of running the actual
> website, delivering the actual work to the end user, we should never run
> anything other than fully free software.
>
> Running back office operations may in some cases require a tradeoff...
> in the case in question, as I understand it so far, SugarCRM is free
> software except that the module for security is proprietary.  I have not
> done any analysis yet to fully understand the status, so I am just
> speaking here of the hypothetical case.
>   

I agree with that.

IMO, the backoffice software being open source is mostly a "would be 
nice" thing---if we end up using proprietary software in some 
behind-the-scenes business operation, that's non-ideal but doesn't 
really impact our charitable mission.

Software somewhere in the delivery path is more important.  Using all 
free software means that anyone can: 1) duplicate our setup gratis (as 
far as software goes); and 2) modify our setup for their own specific needs.

This is not absolutely *necessary* for our charitable mission to achieve 
some success, but maximizing the possible ways others can reuse our 
content with minimum hassle would be nice, and that's best done by 
ourselves using software that others can freely use and modify.

-Mark