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From openshepherd
Project Summary
OpenShepherd ChMS is a project started with the intent of giving churches an enterprise management software suite without the enterprise price. In fact, the software will be, and will always be, free to download and use. In the future, the only items a church might pay for is contract support or code customizations -- otherwise all features and modules will be protected under the GPL v3 open source license.
By design, OpenShepherd is made to be modular, fitting a variety of models. Churches pick the software "plugins" they wish to use, giving them a very custom piece of software. The application can be network-centric, allowing for one global database and multiple concurrent users, or it can be a desktop application only found on one person's computer. Plugins can be installed on the machine running OpenShepherd's client interface, or they will be capable of running over the web via a plugin repository. And above all things, the user interface will be easy to use and understand, since learning curves are expensive and frustrating.
The project is currently under heavy development and looking to April 2009 for an initial release of the core components of the system. It's the intent of the team to get help from developers across the globe to develop plugins for the system, and hopefully get a large repository of plugin choices within months of this release date.
Any interest, suggestions or questions can be directed to openshepherd at gmail dot com
Project News
- As the April deadline looms in our future, the development team has been working hard on coming up with a finalized set of plugins to be released with the initial Core version. Contact Manager is a given, but besides that, we're looking for ideas. What do you need in order to help you better organize your church office? Is there something you'd like to have for any day-to-day function, but don't have the money to spend to get it? If you have ideas, please send them our way -- openshepherd at gmail dot com
- Implementation of the JPF framework is for the most part completed. There are a couple of items outstanding, but these are minor and will come with future releases of the Core. Focus on plugin development and strong Core API functionality has begun, and we're shooting for April 10th 2009 for a beta release of the bundle.
Links of Interest
- Developer's Guide (coming soon)
- Release Schedule/Roadmap
- How can you help?
- Who is the development team?
