I am so far behind, it's not funny. I've got to catch up. My goal is to catch up by the end of this month, so that I'll still be on track to make it to 100 free and open source tools by December. This post gives me the chance to finally write the very belated post on MPower I've been meaning to write since I got back from NTC.

MPower is not a new product. It's been around for quite a while, and has a solid user base. It is an enterprise-class client/server CRM, and has the kind of features you see in such packages as Blackbaud's Raiser's Edge. What's new about MPower is that it has very recently been released as open source. I had a great sit-down with Randy McCabe, CEO and Leo D'Angelo (CTO) of MPower at NTC. I heard a lot about the product, and their plans, and I was impressed with their thinking, and with the direction they are heading. Their basic idea makes a lot of sense to me, and it clearly is an idea that lots of companies that release open source products are thinking: don't increase revenue by trying to milk as many current customers as possible (which is, frankly, the goal of many proprietary software vendors, especially those with very niche packages without much potential for growth in customer base,) broaden the number of customers out there greatly by making barrier to entry low. They expect to make up the difference in revenue that they got from licenses from services sold to a greater number of organizations that would not have been customers otherwise. Lots of open source companies (RedHat, MySQL AB, Novell, Alfresco, SugarCRM, Canonical) are doing similar things. For you purists: don't get all upset. Yes, it's a Windows product. Yes, it's written in .NET and C#. Yes, it requires MSSQL server. So what? It's open source, and it is yet another option for organizations - and it is an open source replacement for Raiser's Edge. How cool is that? And it's open source - so someone who really cares can port it to work with MySQL, etc. And, it's got completely open APIs. All of that said, there are a few things I hope that they consider. I hope that they decide to go with an OSI approved license (they are currently using their own, which is a modification of the Apache license. Having looked at it, it's a fine license, but it would help them if they used one that is known already, like the GPL, or LGPL, etc.) They also have, at this point, no community. They have a partner program, which is like a lot of partner programs - you have to be vetted, yadda yadda. Not at all in alignment with the open source ethic. They need to open their doors, make installing MPower easy (it's not, at this point) and set up some community functions to help grow a community around the product, which will help it grow, and really help to begin to provide the avenues for developers to get involved, and continue to help build the product. I'll be following MPower closely over the next months and years. I have high hopes for it. And Blackbaud may well be shaking in their boots. Here's some other coverage:

• Podcast from the Nonprofit Tech Blog
• Post from Josiah Richie
• Video Interview of Randy McCabe