Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Social Source Socialist?

Oh, how I love it when corporations make arguements that can be applied in different ways. In the fundraising software space, there is a debate about people filing business process patents for specific online fundraising methods. The most noise comes from software vendors that will lose business if a single vendor is the only one able to offer a specific business process.

One arguement against business process patents is:

Shouldn't technology enable us to do more and to do it more effectively? Restricting our use of fundraising tools limits the number of people we can engage, the volume of donations we will receive, and ultimately, the universe of people we can help.
So I gotta do it:

Shouldn't technology enable nonprofits to do more and to do it more effectively? Restricting nonprofit use of fundraising tools (through expensive proprietary software licenses) limits the number of people nonprofits can engage, the volume of donations nonprofits will receive, and ultimately, the universe of people nonprofits can help.

This is not an arguement to make things free (the social source ecosystem depends on customer revenue), just an arguement to radically reduce barriers to adoption. ;)

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