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6 Reasons Open Source Makes Sense

3rd Sector Labs

We talk a lot about Open Source technology (and we use it quite extensively too) so it might make sense for us to take a moment and explain why we are such advocates. Affordability – Open Source is free of licensing fees. Proven – Open Source platforms like Drupal, WordPress, CiviCRM, etc.,

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Open Source vs. Proprietary: Graphics and Video

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

On the open source side, the projects that stand out are GIMP (a Photoshop replacement) and Inkscape (a vector graphics program – like Illustrator). Both GIMP and Inkscape are completely cross-platform, and available for Mac, Windows and Linux. On the open source side, one program you must know about is VLC by VideoLAN.

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Open Source vs. Proprietary: Nonprofit CRM

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

Because of this, the deck has always been stacked against open source tools in this arena. However, Salesforce in particular has a leg up that most other proprietary tools don’t have, because of their open APIs and their incredibly robust development platform. It can be tough to troubleshoot issues.

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An Open Source Website Personalization Tool for Mission-Driven Organizations

Forum One

As we work primarily with open source CMS platforms, such as Drupal and WordPress, our tool is effective in its ability to integrate within the CMS as well as be flexible for organization-specific needs. We look forward to sharing an update soon! Potential and growth of our tool.

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Open Source vs. Proprietary: Desktop Productivity

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

I’ve been using this tool since it actually was StarOffice, more than 10 years ago, when it was first open sourced by Sun in 2000. It is the only fully cross-platform office suite with pretty much the same functionality and interface independent of platform.

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Study the Data, But Eat the Cake—Put the Human Factor Forward

.orgSource

Several providers offer open source or limited free access, which is a great way to test options. Free and Open-Source Apache Spark provides a powerful platform for large-scale data processing and machine learning tasks. RapidMiner is another open-source platform with a drag-and-drop interface.

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SaaS vs. Open Source

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

Home About Me Subscribe Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology Thoughtful and sometimes snarky perspectives on nonprofit technology SaaS vs. Open Source September 24, 2008 I just finished writing a post for the Idealware blog about choosing SaaS vs. Open source. From my perspective, the key is openness.