Open Source Church (Part 1)
| Posted in Church IT, Technology, church, free | Posted on 28-05-2008
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As most ideas start with me lately, we we’re talking in the IRC chatroom the other day about open source and free software and such. I threw out the question I wonder if there are any church’s that are running completely open source? I can’t imagine wanting to do this, trying to do this, or this being even worthwhile. So I’m posting this not as a should you or shouldn’t you have an open source church but could you. So the idea is to compile a list of the good, bad, and ugly of different software to fill the software shoes of your church. I have a feeling this may not be a possibility to be completely open source as if you go to Linux as your OS I think you’ll eliminate alot of the the other opensource software that you could use as they are based on Windows or Mac. This will be an interactive series as it will take everyone’s input to make this a worthwhile list. First we’ll need to compile the list of areas where software is needed, program types so to say. I’ll start this off below but please add other program types that software is needed:
- Server/Desktop Operating System
- Word Processing
- Presentation
- Church Database System
- Email/Communication
- Website creation/management
- Financials
- Video/Graphic creation/editing
- Helpdesk
- Bible study
- ????
So what other areas are needed?
I don’t know about categories, but we’re using a lot of open source (or otherwise free) software. Our network gateway is open source, running on a Linux distro. It’s beautiful. We make extensive use of Google Apps, which isn’t technically open source, but it is free. I use Clonezilla, an open source hard drive cloning and workstation deployment app. I’m using Spiceworks (ad supported, again not technically open source) for my HelpDesk and network inventory solution. I use Ethereal for sniffing out packets. For Web stuff, I deploy a number of open source packages like Moodle, ModX CMS, Joomla, etc. I’m a big fan of open source software, but I can’t use it exclusively.
Matthew,
You’re getting ahead of me, but good stuff nonetheless. That’s my next task to survey the open source (or free) software that everyone is using and try to compile an ongoing list of good worthwhile tools and programs. I’m like you and use Google Apps throughout but haven’t tried a lot of the others you mentioned, learning stuff already.