GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS

GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
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Graham Mitchell

Implementor, Administrator, end-user, Trainer

MC3

http://mc3.coop

I've been working with CiviCRM since 2006 or thereabouts. The community is outstanding in providing support and sharing expertise, which combines with a strong product to enable me in turn to deliver better results for the organisations that I work with. I only hope that over time I will be able to repay the debt by supporting other newcomers to CiviCRM.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
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Carlos Capote Pérez-Andreu

Administrator, Developer

Amnistía Internacional España

http://www.es.amnesty.org

CiviCRM helps us to unify the management of different databases (volunteers, members, etc) allowing us to keep control over our data.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
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Jane Hanley

implementor, administrator

AGH Strategies

http://www.aghstrategies.com

We help nonprofits make the best use of their data to further their mission.
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Nicolas Ganivet

Implementor, Developper

cividesk

http://www.cividesk.com

The community around CiviCRM is international, multicultural, friendly, sometime opinionated but always respectful and welcoming new ideas. It is a real pleasure to interact with these people - but see for yourself: dive in and ask your first question on the forums!

We thoroughly appreciate CiviCRM as a software and this community, and when helping our customers implement and make the best of CiviCRM we are always looking for ways to contribute back.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
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El McNab

Admin, Implementor

Circle interactive

null

We help many not for profits implement CiviCRM through consultancy, training, configuration, support and custom development. Many of them come from a painful world of old Access databases, multiple spreadsheets and even paper. I love presenting demonstrations to new potential users; many are shocked by the scale of the software. CiviCRM is suitable for so many different organisations as it's been developed to cover so many bases off the back of community calls.

I maintain our own CiviCRM client database; it feeds into our drupal intranet to provide me with all the information I need at a click. I would be lost without it!
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
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Merlise Clyde

End-user, administrator

International Society of Bayesian Analysis

http://bayesian.org

ISBA is an international non-profit society with members from all over the world. We have sections that represent different scientific areas and chapters that represent different regions of the world. Civi Member powers our membership system! We use CiviEvent for Conference and Workship registration, and utilize CiviPetition for creating new sections to our society through member petitions. We are epxloring how CiviGrants can be used to track our travel awards and look forward to features for integrating accounting and finance. As a growing non-profit CiviCRM plays a major role in managing our membership system!
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
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Kendall Dinwiddie

Developer

Democratic Volunteer Center

http://www.demvolctr.org

Gathering volunteer information; assisting delegating group assignments; internal communication
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Bryan Cole

Implementor

BackOffice Thining

http://www.backofficethinking.com

CiviCRM is one of the core offerings of our company. Remaining close to the CiviCRM community is important to us, as it keeps us close to new developments in the tool, and allows us to offer our feedback for new releases.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
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Donald Lobo

Implementor, Developer

CiviCRM LLC

http://civicrm.org

Still thinking of a deep deep quote. Basically:

It is super important for non-profits, advocacy and related groups to take charge of their destiny. Having control of your data is a good start. The crowd-sourced nature of an open source project in so in line with the co-operation and principles of most non-profits

CiviCRM is a project that strives to make the above possible. It is FREE as in kittens.
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Lisa Hubbert

94110

Creative Arts Charter School, SFArtsED

http://www.sfartsedsummer.org

Online donations, class registration, school tour registration, online enrollment applications, volunteer hour tracking, organization directories
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
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Lynna Landstreet

Web developer

Freeform Solutions

http://www.freeform.ca

Freeform Solutions uses CiviCRM to help the non-profit organizations we develop sites for to manage information about their members, volunteers, activists, donors, employees and other contacts, and to handle donations, correspondence, mailings and more. We support the CiviCRM community by contributing documentation, patches, modules and code, and are a silver sponsor of CiviCon 2013.
GROWING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
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Andrew Hunt

Implementor, Developer

AGH Strategies

http://aghstrategies.com

CiviCRM allows our clients to have a robust tool for tracking and engaging their supporters that can grow with them. I began as an end user, and now I work with CiviCRM full-time.

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Home » About » Licensing

AGPL License FAQs

This FAQ has been prepared by our legal counsel to clarify the implications of the AGPL license.

How is the Affero General Public License ("AGPL") different from the GNU General Public License (“GPL")?
The AGPL license is identical to the GPL except for one additional section, 2(d), that covers the interaction with application programs through web services or computer networks. Section 2(d) reads as follows: "If the Program as you received it is intended to interact with users through a computer network and if, in the version you received, any user interacting with the Program was given the opportunity to request transmission to that user of the Program's complete source code, you must not remove that facility from your modified version of the Program or work based on the Program, and must offer an equivalent opportunity for all users interacting with your Program through a computer network to request immediate transmission by HTTP of the complete source code of your modified version or other derivative work." For more information about the AGPL see the AGPL Frequently Asked Questions located at http://www.affero.org/oagf.html.

Why is CiviCRM licensed under the AGPL?
The Social Source Foundation believes that the CiviCRM community of users, partners, and developers should have certain rights to its software if they begin to interact with it. Since interaction with CiviCRM often occurs over a network, such as through an Application Service Provider ("ASP") model, the current version of the GPL does not fully protect their freedoms. Affero had similar concerns and worked with the Free Software Foundation ("FSF") to address them by adding a new provision to the GPL that protects the rights of those who interact with software through a computer network. That new provision is Section 2(d) referenced above.

How is this relevant to nonprofit technology?
CiviCRM exists to improve the efficiency of small nonprofits and NGOs by spurring innovation and making open source software solutions affordable and ubiquitous. The AGPL ensures improvements to CiviCRM will be shared and all users will have access to the source code. This serves the purposes of affordability and ubiquity.

Can I distribute CiviCRM as part of a GPL-licensed piece of software? How does that work?
Yes, so long as CiviCRM is a separate and independent program from the GPL-licensed software. You cannot combine code licensed under both licenses into a single program and then redistribute that combination because the AGPL and the current version of the GPL are incompatible. CiviCRM is designed to be a stand-alone application that can communicate with other applications via a defined and published application programming interface (API). If you do not make modifications to CiviCRM files, but instead distribute it along side another application that utilizes the CiviCRM functionality only through its API, CiviCRM will remain a separate and independent program from the other application. This means that, although you must of course still comply with the AGPL with respect to CiviCRM, your distribution of the other separate and independent program is not governed by the AGPL.

For example, a distribution of CivicSpace typically contains three separate bodies of code that interoperate: Drupal and CivicSpace licensed under the GPL and CiviCRM licensed under the AGPL. This is permissible because the three bodies of code are separate and independent programs and CiviCRM is only used through its API. The mere fact that the programs are distributed along side one another does not make the license of one program apply to the others. As the AGPL says in Section 2, "mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."

Can I build a product on top of CiviCRM and offer it as an ASP without having to provide a download of the source code to that separate product?
Yes, so long as CiviCRM is a separate and independent program that your program interacts with solely through its API, the download provision of the AGPL does not apply to your separate program. If, however, CiviCRM files are modified in any way, then that modified version of CiviCRM is subject to the AGPL and its download requirements.