[pp.int.general] Pirate Party of Germany chooses proprietary software

[Sebastian Nerz]

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Felipe Sanches <juca at members.fsf.org>
> An: pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> Gesendet: 31.7.'11,  0:10
> 
> On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 6:37 PM, Aza <rata_0071 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> 2011/7/30 Boris Turovskiy <tourovski at gmail.com>
>>
>>> Ahoi,
>>>
>>> > Which software is this? what does it do?
>>> It's basically a database program which coordinates the accounting
>>> (income/expenditures) and the member management (members by regional
>>> association). Until now we've used spreadsheets for accounting, which is
>>> OK for a group of 100 people but is somewhat uncomfortable for 12000.
>>> The link is
>>>
>>> http://vorstand.piratenpartei.de/2011/07/19/start-der-umsetzung-des-beschlusses-uber-die-verwaltungssoftware/
>>> (German) - while the posting was intended to be trolling the decision is
>>> not, and is final.
>>>
>>> Best regARRRds,
>>> Boris
>>>
>>
>> 40k E in management software nice, may the trolling begin,
>> did you ask for the icon to be in cornflower blue?
>>
>>
> The right thing to do when there is no libre software available for a
> specific task is to hire someone to develop it. I am pretty sure you could
> develop a libre management software for 40k and solve the issue not only for
> the pirate party in germany, but for every pirate party in the world and
> also for every organization that has similar needs.

We have asked several FLOSS-companies and the *best* offer wo got was around 200k EUR. So - no, it is not possible to solve this issue easily. We would have loved to do so - but there simply is no way to achieve this ATM.

And no, providing this for an international focus it is not a trivial part. There are quite a number of nation-specific laws to consider, certifications to get, commercial APIs to implement, etc 
We do not only talk about a basic finance-controlling software for a medium sized company (actually 12k members is far from medium sized). In addition we need a software to handle donations (complying w/ the german laws and handling fixed-usage donations on a national level is not easy), membership, etc. We need quite complex acls (16 states, far more then 100 regional or communal parties, etc) and reporting mechanisms (see transparency).

Its neither easy nor fast to implement a floss alternative, there is not a single sufficient one available at the moment and we DO need an extensive software now (among other things the lack of one was critized in last years control report).

@Christian: yes, the next board may decide to get another softtware. Being able to change past decisions is an important part of democracy. And if there ever is a floss alternative, we will glady test it and think about switching. But right now the treaty is signed, we have bought the software.

Regards,

Sebastian