[Calendula-devel] OFBiz

[Phillip Mills]

Hi, I'm new here.

As an introduction, I've been developing software for about twenty-five 
years and have an interest in non-profit organizations gained mostly by 
knowing someone who is closely tied to that sector.  (My wife consults 
on issues of organization and governance.)  As a result I'm very 
interested in seeing some sector-specific software exist that would 
help NPs move away from the cash drain of existing products.  I also 
think there are major benefits for smaller NPs in taking control of 
their own data via software that's client-neutral.

Related to this, I've been paying attention to a number of projects.  
My first question is whether people here are familiar with the Open For 
Business project (<http://www.ofbiz.org/>).  I suspect that if 
applications designed for non-profits were added to the OFBiz 
infrastructure there would be a good payback from being to interoperate 
with the existing and planned OFBiz applications.

I've traded e-mail with one of their originators on the general subject 
of non-profit customizations.  Here's a portion of his response:
"I think it would be neat to have some of the applications you listed 
below as part of the project. Membership management could most likely 
be managed as is through the Party Manager, and Event Management 
through the WorkEffort Manager. Tracking fund raising, 
awards/grants/etc, and so on would require some work that would 
probably be pretty specific to use by NPs, but still generic enough (in 
my opinion) to include in the open source project."

He finishes with:
"Anyway, it sounds interesting. Let us know what kind of project you 
are working on and how we might be able to help."

Whether or not there's any connection to be made there, I'm also 
interested in what's being proposed as features for Calendula and would 
like to help if I can.

........................
Phillip Mills
Multi-platform software development
(416) 224-0714