I’m warning you – this is snarky.
I was only vaguely following the brou-ha-ha over Causes leaving Myspace. Only vaguely because I don’t really keep close track of the goings on in the Social Networking space: it’s not my passion. I use them a lot, both for work as well as for personal use. I know they are becoming an increasingly important tool for nonprofits in communicating with their constituents, and so I do keep them in my peripheral vision, for sure.
Anyway, in reading the varied reactions to this news, I had to just sigh, and then get annoyed. Sigh because of what feels to me to be the wasted energy that the nonprofit sector has spent over many years, using, hawking, and supporting proprietary tools and companies. Annoyed because it seems the nptech community hasn’t figured this out, even being hit over the head with this over, and over, and over again.
Make no mistake about it – Causes is a for profit company, and they are making what is, I’d bet, a decision based entirely on economics. If you’ve read any of the gloomy news from Silicon Valley, this is just the beginning. Social ventures will not be immune to the blowing winds of economic distress.
If we keep building our nonprofit toolsets on proprietary software and for-profit web services, even if they are free (for now) we are going to be bit by this over and over again. The only way we’re going to get out of this cycle is to channel this energy and resources into open software (including “open” source apps for proprietary web services), open standards, and open networks – things no one can take away.
I love to write blog entries about successful open source efforts – like CiviCRM, or the amazing stuff people are doing in the mobile space. Writing blog entries about for-profit web vendors that make economic decisions that hurt nonprofits because we depend on them too much is just not fun.
{ 4 comments }