Why progressives need to care about Open Source

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I read today that eTapestry was purchased by Blackbaud.

Blackbaud is the industry standard for fundraising data management. The purchased their only previous real competitor in the late nineties, Fundmaster, another company started by Jay Love, founder of eTapestry.

This is just business.

But the consequences of a publicly shared company especially having so much control over the fundraising and service delivery models of so many companies are dire.

There are issues core to a civil and democratic society here.

Fewer and fewer organizations without large sums of money will be able to deploy these solutions, and they are locked into a vendor relationship practically in perpetuity, as much capital required for the initial and ongoing outlay.

That can be feasible and even work well for an organization with a robust enough systems and financial infrastructure to capitalize on the sophistication of the tool. This is the way a Naval Warship, while it packs a whollop, requires massive, massive expense to deliver its payload. It's not just the shell landing, it's all the people and systems required to deliver it.

Many times organizations are buying what they think is an army when all it is is a bullet.

The monopolization of software development by the few also stifles creativity, pushes out software jobs further to the fringes, where workers can be exploited by massive global companies, literally using them to write code without letting them use their brains. You stifle human potential when human minds and bodies are exploited for purely commercial gain, especially to a faceless marketplace ruled by global multinationals.

Ironically, while the environment becomes trickier to navigate within an open source software community - where the code is free, it makes it easier for anyone to say that they do software/web development - the differentiator comes less from marketing and more from peer review and community acceptance, providing a more robust marketplace based on a win-win for client and vendor both, rather than the cards-to-the-vest price scheming the rage in primitivist economics.

The value and priority shifts from generating a profit for shareholders to building a solution for a community of users, allowing ALL of them to enjoy a greater quality of life, not an every shifting zero-sum game.

You will have more choices in vendors.

Those vendors, with lower barriers to entry, "compete" for market share by providing you the exact tools you need, with greater transparency in cost. Smaller software merchants generally are also more likely to share the community and values you support.

The same way I gladly pay more for my tomatoes buying directly from the farmer if it means those tomatoes keep coming, and I know I'm supporting someone's livelihood locally and directly. And I'm going to share that producer's info with other people.

With software development, the idea of local is much more expansive.

Some of my closest and most trusted collaborators, even friends, are people I've never met, ispired by the vision of a world where nationhood reflects a culture, not hatred or exclusion.