CoreTech was—and is—built using Open Source Software (OSS) and development. It’s a movement among website architects that you’ve probably heard of before. Open source.
Both the technology and philosophy behind OSS line up very well with CoreTech’s culture, to share with others and work together for greater change.
But what exactly is open source, and what in the world does it mean for you?
From the pages of Wiki: Open source as a development model promotes universal access via a free license to a product’s design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone.
Let’s take that in for a moment. It means that there are blueprints to entire website designs being copied, shared, and improved upon—and it’s non-malicious and perfectly legal!
It’s really rather ironic. See, OSS is more of an interactive community of sorts that formed in response to the vast number of issues created by new copyright, licensing, domain and consumer regulations. But nobody knew at the time just how beneficial this movement would prove to be.
In recent years, OSS is growing rapidly.
Recent results from the 9th Annual Future of Open Source Survey were published and the numbers are almost shocking.
78% of respondents said their companies run part or all of its operations on OSS
Even more eye-opening…
Less than 3% don’t use OSS in anyway
That’s fairly significant! But we only have half the story. Ok, so most companies practice OSS, but why? And that is the million dollar question…
The benefits to OSS are seemingly endless. It delivers superior security and exceptional quality. It scales better and is much easier to grow and customize than a one-size-fits-all proprietary approach that will eventually need to be rebuilt (at a hefty price) rather than evolve. It provides a certain transparency so customers or clients can rest assured that “behind the scenes” is being seen by unaffiliated experts and contributors.
There really are so many advantages, but the bottom line is this…
Would you rather have a software solution built by 5 developers… or 500?
That is the power of OSS.
CoreTech uses OSS for its toolbox, CORE, that helps nonprofits address basic organizational needs leveraging the same powerful, cutting-edge Open-Source technologies used by the Fortune 1000. You may not have realized that Apple does this too, offering Darwin operating system for free, while selling Mac OS X. Adobe offers Flex for free, while charging for Flash Builder IDE. And there are so many other examples.
What sets CoreTech apart is that their OSS offers IT professionals a rare opportunity to give back to the world. There are a variety of ways for developers, project managers, and CTO’s to contribute their time to help nonprofits further their reach and make a positive impact everywhere.
