[CS-FSLUG] FOSS equivalent of Church Community Builder webapp?

[Don Parris]

Michael Bradley, Jr. wrote:
>                                                             JMJ + OBT
> 
> Does there exist a FOSS project which provides (roughly) equivalent  
> functionality of Church Software's "Church Community Builder" webapp?
> 
> 
>          http://www.churchcommunitybuilder.com/
> 
> 
> 

My best guess is ChurchInfo, one of the successors to InfoCentral. 
Alternatively, you may want to check out something like eGroupware. 
ChurchInfo is fairly mature, and the developer is/was involved with Freely 
(at least briefly).  You'll find a few of his posts on the Freely forum - 
might be under software.

I wrote CHADDB, but it is still just a back-end.  Know any serious Python 
hackers?  While there is a Java front-end underway, CHADDB remains 
vaporware, other than the backend part.  The Python front-end is called 
Ekklesia.  You can use either MySQL or PostgreSQL.  Otherwise, I'm afraid 
it's slim pickins' for church management.

One of my goals in organizing The Freely Project as a legal enttity is to 
setup a legal non-profit ministry that can help fund software development 
projects.  If enough churches and individuals support it, we could offer a 
serious alternative to the current proprietary offerings in fairly short 
order.  While the church management would take precedence initially, we 
would also help sponsor other projects already underway.  Sword, Lyricue, 
OpenLP, Asaph, etc. would all get funding.

I also hope to offer technology demos and pay for advertising to help raise 
awareness of libre software within the mainstream Christian community. 
Christian Computing's editor in chief told me outright he won't print 
articles about libre software because his advertising comes from proprietary 
vendors.  As long as we allow these folks to hold that over our heads, we 
will face an uphill battle.

On the other hand, the recent Massachusetts decision should prove helpful. 
As mentioned in the other thread, churches have the same reasons for 
adapting the OpenDocument standard.  That's at least a starting point.

Locally, I have had some potential doors opened that I believe will prove 
fruitful.  We shall see.

Blessings,
Don