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Does anyone know of any active open source projects working on political campaign management software?
I looked on sourceforge but didn't see anything relevant from the queries "political", "politics", "donations", "campaign", or in the categories "accounting", "politics" or "voting".
I'm involved with a political campaign that is currently paying out the nose for some horribly designed SaaS (whose Name i Guess i should Protect, ahem) to basically just keep track of donations people have made now, donations people have made in the past, donations people have pledged to make, contact information, the way they will likely vote, etc.
It's a bit much to manage in spreadsheets, but doesn't seem like it's something complex enough that political campaigns should have to pay for (especially low-budget local ones).
I'd love to help out if such a project exists, or start/revive one if it doesn't.
Any hints, places to look, etc are much appreciated.
Drupal CMS has modules which can probably help. Although I don't have any experience in using these modules you can look at CiviCRM.
A search at drupalmodules.com also revealed some other modules.
I don't know of any exactly. However, you could probably use some off the shelf open source solution that is not targeted specifically as campaigns. Perhaps you could use many kinds of project management or even bug tracking type of applications to help. As far as tracking donations, you should be able to find some open source project to fill this need, even if it is not that specific. You could even write this without too much trouble if needed.
Edit, here is one CRM project that purports to work with campaign management:
http://sourcetapcrm.sourceforge.net/
CiviCRM is a Drupal, Joomla or standalone software package to help nonprofits.
It can:
run mailing lists
subscribe members
process donations
manage event registration and payment
It shoudl be suitable for a political campaign
I work with CiviCRM a lot
I'm the creator of Voter Universe, a new open source web application for helping political campaigns and political organizations analyze and interact with their voter data. The application is still in active development, but we expect to have our first production release in October 2009 as well as the launch of an affordably priced hosted service.
The first release will not include donor management, but that functionality is a high priority item after the first release.
I created a screencast a few weeks ago in advance of starting to spread the word about the application at Netroots Nation. You can view the screencast at our website, http://www.voteruniverse.com
Jason Lantz
'To basically just keep track of donations people have made now, donations people have made in the past, donations people have pledged to make, contact information, the way they will likely vote, etc.': in the absense of a proper tailor made program I would manipulate QuickBooks - by creating an invoice for pledges on the date they're made while issuing receipts on the dates donations are collected; as well as creating a bank account to deposit all monies and writing checks to track all expences. The contact info part is easy. To track the way people will likely vote I will create party-items which will be used on the sales or service line when creating the invoice e.g. partyA-item, partyB-item, partyC-item etc and will pull up the specific sales/service graph to moniter vote pattern. I trust that you find my advice useful.
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I'm a developer on the Synergy+ project, and today we received our first donation! Now, I did write at one point that we would spend the money on advertising, in order to find new developers - but I'm not really sure how to go about this, or if it's the best way to spend the donations. We would spend it on hosting, only we use only canned hosting for our site which is free. Maybe in future we'll have some hosted services, but I don't know if it'll ever be necessary.
Does anyone have any experience with handling donation money from end-users? I'd like know what other projects have done about this (e.g. Ubuntu). Should we just save it for a rainy day? Also, I'm accepting the PayPal donations to my personal account, which I'm a little wary about, since the project doesn't belong to me - it has a collective ownership really. Is it normal to have a single person who is the treasurer?
Update 1:
Thanks for your comments! In response, I have changed our statement about how donations will be spent.
"We are currently establishing a funds reserve, so that we can hire professional open-source developers to fix the most critical bugs, and move the project forward. We promise to spend your donations very carefully, and discuss how the funds should be spent between all of our key project members. Not only will your donation help our project to move forward, it will also boost moral and community spirit - because it shows that what we're doing really matters! Thank you."
Pizza and Beer?
In all honesty though, I think the open source community respects honesty above all else. If you said you were going to spend the money on something, you should probably follow through.
I wouldn't spend the money on advertising to attract new developers: I think that's way too small a target market for the advertising to be at all effective.
I'd either save the money for future contingencies, or spend the money on advertising meant to attract general users of the project. Or I'd pay myself for the time I put in (after checking with the donor to make sure that wouldn't piss them off). Last resort would be a huge party with strippers and coke.
Speaking as an occasional donor, I really don't care what my money gets spent on. My one and only goal when I donate is to encourage the developers to continue working on the project. If that means they all used it for beer money that's fine by me. :)
So my advice would be, spend it on whatever you think will encourage you and the rest of the community to continue developing and let everyone know the how&why.
For a first contribution a few beers seems like a great idea to me. "In celebration of our first contribution and a lot of hard work by all..." etc.
Many large open source projects have setup a foundation that solves most of the problems you ask here.
If you really received such a large donation and need developers, I would actually put that money into hiring a developer. Instead of spending money on advertising, spend money on the product and the current developers so they don't get bored of maintaining it.
An open source project should be successful by merit, not by advertising money.
Many larger open source projects that request donations have incorporated as a non-profit corporation, and the donation goes to the non-profit. A great example is the Apache project.
Often, a single developer-led project will accept donations. Technically, in this case, the developer (in most countries) should treat the "donation" as income. This gives complete freedom to do nearly anything with the money - but usually it should be funneled back into the project in some form.
Normally, I'd recommend using the money to pay developers, pay for infrastructure (like hosting), or potentially even use it for something like stipends for student contributors. The latter is my personal favorite - I enjoy giving money to groups that help fund new development and encourage students to contribute.
However, whatever you choose to do with the money, I believe it is very important to be public about that information. If there is no mention of how the money is spent, I'd expect it to stop coming over time... People are more willing to donate when they know how their contributions will be used.
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A year ago I was a big fan of .NET. I was developing custom applications on demand and it was not hard to understand how you can live by doing this kind of job - the customer asks you to make a custom application, you arrange the price, do the job and earn money.
Now I hear more and more people talking about open source projects and collective intelligence which seems a great concept to contribute something to the innovation. But of course as a full-time employee it is hard to find time to work for free and I don't understand what are other benefits of contributing to open source projects beside personal satisfaction.
I would be very thankful if you could explain how the contribution to the open source project could be paid off.
Thanks.
There are a few benefits to working on open source projects. I'll be brief here and allow you to work out the detail as you go.
Experience. You'll get to use some stuff you probably won't get to use in your day job.
Fun. It will be a project you've chosen, so you can enjoy it a bit more.
Freedom. There will probably be less rules about what you can use and how funky you can make things (within reason)
You Need It! You'll probably choose a product that you have some need for but you want to contribute to the features.
Just because something is open source, doesn't mean it isn't "commercially viable". For example, you might charge for the service of installing, configuring and guiding a client who uses the application and the fact that the software is open source is a big selling point. You don't make money from license fees, you make money from consultancy.
As far as employability is concern? Street cred.
Peer-interviewers often take (varying degrees of) stock in a fellow programmer's contribution to open source projects, especially if you're at a junior level. It shows self-motivation, proactive-ness, ability to work in distributed teams, proof that you've actually used some sort of version control, etc.
One other reason: Suppose you use version 1.4 of an open source product and want a feature added to it. You add it on your own copy and do not contribute back to the open source version. When version 1.5 is released with a lot of other goodies that you would love to have, you will again need to patch up 1.5 with your required feature. If you had contributed back and it went into the open source version, you will not have this maintenance problem.
For me to work as in open source projects has the following advantages:
Make you learn more
Shows to the world your development skills
Make you a reference in a specific subject or for a group of people
Give a good impression about you that you work with development because you love it. Love enough to spend your free time on a free project
It can become a product in the future or with a "key module" or plugins that a user must pay for it
One more time: make you learn more, specially if you are doing a project without relation with your "daily job"
For personal use, many people want to contribute to the open source because they use so much themselves. And the only way they can use open source is if people contribute to it. Also if people want a feature added, they can help others by giving it away.
For many companies, creating open source software means they can benefit largely from additions made by other people, while still getting the software they need.
Also there is the great amount of personal experience, and a good item on your CV that helps.
However, in the end, most open source projects are run/created by people that do it make the software they work on better, to help others.
Contributing to open source shows that you like software development, not just the salary - that can make you more interesting to a prospective employer.
Here's my reasons:
Why I spend so much time working on an Opensource project
And my views about the differences between paid jobs and working on open source projects might also be interesting here.
You might also ask, what are the benefits of giving or volunteering for a charity?
In terms of getting paid, some companies employ people to work on open source projects, full time. But the vast majority of minor contributions will see no direct monetary payback, apart from knowing that the software has been improved for everyone using it. Of course, things such as reputation can be built, you learn more skills and potential employers can see your work, but these in themselves will not necessary equal a monetary payback.
If you write you own software and open-source is you can still sell it, and sell support services for it (e.g. helplines, support, paper manuals, custom programming) This is a common business model for open source companies.
Help to improve code
You can get all updates to you software. You can find out pitfalls and defects in your code if someone else edited some functionality in your code.
Added functionality
Any one can add functionality to your software. By this you will be aware of what all things you missed in the design and can contribute to your future software development.
You might like to try reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar, by Eric S Raymond (a big open source contributor). It's a very good overview of the history of the open source movement, how it works and where it might be going, written in an informal and approachable style. I'm pretty familiar with the ins and outs of open source (my husband's last two jobs have been in open source based companies) but I still learnt a lot from it.
you will be listed as contributors in the project website (if any) and this is great because you can tell your clients that you are the contributor of that open source product. It would add value to you.
it would be good for your portofolio/resume if you are involved in open source project in the past / present.
for fun. you help eagerly to make a better software for yourself and others. it also fun to see your open source project grows and being used by many companies.
experience that you would have for being work together as team. also you can learn from others how to code.
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I own a small ISV company that consist of 2 people. We sell a single product built using Microsoft web technologies (ASP/VB6, some .NET). In business for a a few years now, and with relatively stable gross revenues in the low 6 figures.
I'm considering selling the company and moving on to something else, but I'm a unclear on the best approach to to take. I'm not expecting a huge price, and I'm thinking of a gross revenue multiplier of 2 (which seems low to me... but what do I know)... so call it mid 6 figures.
Any suggestions on how best to proceed?
note: Though not directly programming related the question may be of interest to developers. I wrote the application, every single line of code (so it's not like a phb is asking). Perhaps the moderators could give the question a bit of time to see if community takes an interest.
When you say you are not clear about the best approach to take, do you mean you don't have any buyer yet ?
If that's what you are looking for, I would go first to your company's network: Who is the other person in the company, does (s)he wants to buy your share ? Do you have external investors who could be interested by buying the whole company out ? Do you have customers who could be interested (they are losing a provider after all) ? Do you have providers who could be interested (they are losing a customer) ?
If none of that works for you, I would look for the "extended" network of your company: Partner in business, if you have any (like a hardware manufacturer if you do embedded software). Look at what other software your customers are buying. If it's a very niche market and as you are sharing a customer, their other providers may be interested in buying you out for having another source of revenue with an already established commercial relationship.
Lastly, what about your competitors in this market ? If they buy you, they will mainly buy your customers' portfolio. But maybe they are willing to expand at low cost via a "merge" with your company.
It seems really like when you are looking for a new job to me: It's about using all your network first before looking somewhere else, as it is where you generally get the best results.
Best of luck.
Consider one of the "Business for sale" web sites like www.bizbuysell.com. They also have a "Find a broker" feature.
Short of that I'd talk to the professionals you use (accountant, lawyer, etc). They may know of someone who is looking for a business to buy.
One think to keep in mind is that some buyers (like me) might be interested in buying the assets of the business (the code, the client list, the good will), but not the company it self. The distinction is a fine, but important one.
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I have a problem to solve that I think will take 4 days, but if I had a feature request sorted and a snapshot release then I reckon I could have it done in one. Superficially this creates a budget of 3 x my daily rate to get it the feature-request actioned.
So my questions are, have you ever paid an O/S project member to fix something for you? Did it work out OK? How did you sell the idea to your manager / colleagues and where did the money come from?
Most importantly how did you go about asking nicely? Is there an etiquette for these things? Are the project leaders likely to be receptive to the idea?
In case it matters, the software with the the missing feature is a JBoss project - the home of professional open source - and I'm able to claim expenses as I'm a contractor.
At work, we've had good luck hiring open source maintainers to enhance libraries that we use.
Here are some projects we've done in the past:
We needed to integrate Quake 2 with wxWidgets. We hired Vadim Zeitlin, a major contributor to wxWidgets. In less than 4 days, he built a wxQuake2 widget by adapting the Windows version of Quake 2.
Later on, we needed portable access to raw bitmaps. So we hired Vadim again, and worked with him to produce a new raw bitmap API. This involved a substantial bit of design work, but we really liked the resulting API, and we use it to this day.
At a later date, we hired another one of the core contributors to improve wxWidgets accessibility support. As it turned out, we ended up not using this code right away, for various technical reasons. But other people have been enhancing this code since then, and we hope to use it some day.
In other words, hiring open source maintainers is a lot like hiring any other kind of contractor. But some things are a bit different, too. Here's some advice based on our experiences:
You'll have the most luck if you want to enhance an existing project and release the changes as open source.
In general, you want to hire members of the core team. They have the best track records, they're the most productive, and they have the best chance of getting your changes merged upstream.
You want to get your changes merged upstream. If you don't, you'll be maintaining a local fork, which is a headache.
Before hiring, do some research. Who works on the features you care about? Are they somebody you'd enjoy working with? Read the mailing lists and glance at the version control history, and pick out a few people to approach.
During the design phase, there may be a bit of give-and-take. The developers are looking at the larger health of the project, and you're looking at the needs of a specific business. This has occasionally made negotiations a bit more complicated for us, but the final result has typically been a better design than we would have chosen on our own.
And most importantly, don't be shy. In any sufficiently large open source project, several members of the core team will already run consulting businesses. In smaller open source projects, you'll generally find several contributors who want to run consulting businesses.
And if you're still hesitant to approach somebody, you can always ask, "Do you know anybody who'd be interested in getting paid to work on $FEATURE?" If they're not interested, you haven't put them on the spot, and they may tell you who to ask.
On the whole, we've been impressed with the professionalism and productivity of open source maintainers, and I would recommend this route for others.
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I was curious if anyone out there has experience getting the necessary legal documents (user agreements, privacy policies, disclaimers, etc.) for a small software business. For example if you just want to have a software 'company' that sells a few piece of software that you have written, are there cheap solutions for something small scale like that?
In Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality, Bob suggests MegaDox.com and Soft14.com
Stationery stores will sell standard boiler plate contracts.
For software specific stuff most companies just copy the ones from bigger companies and change the name!
The suggestions by others in other answers are probably fine if you intend to stay small scale, but if your intent is grow, and particularly if you might want to have someone else invest money in the business, then it makes sense to invest in a lawyer, one who has experience in software. It doesn’t have to cost a lot if you can develop a relationship with someone interested in working with you for the long run and not running up fees on those basic documents.
By the way, either route you go, it makes sense to read the documents and make sure they fit what you’re actually doing. If you post a boilerplate privacy policy that says you do x, y and z with customer data, but in fact you do a, b and c instead, you’re creating more potential legal troubles than you’re solving.
I'm testing the waters for a crowd funded project to develop user-friendly EULAs. The EULAs themselves would be developed like open source. If a user encounters one of these "open" EULAs, then the user can feel better about agreeing it because
it's been reviewed by an open process, and
you might encounter this same EULA over and over, so you don't have to read it every time.
https://sites.google.com/a/x2xroads.com/nutshell/open-eula
I have recently been looking for the same info as the OP and found a great book which includes standard agreements for software companies which you may use as is or modify with the help of a lawyer.
The IT/Digital Legal Companion: A Comprehensive Business Guide to Software,
Internet, and IP Law Includes Contract and Web Forms
By: Gene K. Landy; Amy J. Mastrobattista
Publisher: Syngress
Print ISBN-10: 1-59749-256-6
Print ISBN-13: 978-1-59749-256-0
It also includes sections explaining issues that you need to consider for different aspects of you software business in regard to contracts, privacy and intellectual property.