Which brings us to the most important reason the Open Box Office Enterprise ticketing, event management, and volunteer self-management system might yet be able to follow an inspiring series of quotations from Monty Python:

The Agaric Design Collective is doing great. That matters because I’m in it. This poor OBOE project helped launch Agaric Design by moving me to walk my talk about the value of open source free software, walk away from a well-paying desk job, and start doing web development. (Fortunately I’m doing so with people who can design.) People are contacting us from all over the country, and also New Zealand, on the strength of the fact that we say we do Drupal. And we’re delivering, for the most part.

If the OBOE project finds organizations that want its tools, Agaric can make them. We can and certainly will pass on the work and money to other developers if available, but it’s no longer a matter of connecting the financial resources to developers: Agaric, collectively, has the programming talent.

So go ahead and contact Agaric. Expressions of interest alone are very welcome. Ideally, as a way to fund major open source free software projects like this, a system can be set up whereby:

1. Pledges of support reach a sufficient level
2. A 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with a relevant mission (possibly PWGD) takes those pledges as donations and loans, for use only on the open source free software project
3. Developers are paid to create the software
4. The software project actively solicits donations made to the 501(c)3 organization on its behalf
5. Received donations are split between
   • maintaining/extending the software
   • paying back the original organizations and people that believed in the project all but some fixed amount of their initial investment

This model is designed especially with nonprofit organizations and cause-based groups in mind. People and other groups donating to the project have the extra incentive of supporting visionary organizations that took a risk for the benefit of all, and the groups that put up the money don’t earn interest or profit on it but instead have taken the opportunity to make the best investment in their own future.

Open source software is used, tested, maintained and contributed to by whole overlapping communities. Free open source software (FOSS) is about freedom and control from minor need-based modifications to fundamental political and economic independence. FOSS is a resource, a tool, a power – since most software is itself about organization – that cannot be taken away by anyone. Welcome to the Commons. So much goes on here, and so much more will occur as more people hear the good words of open source developers: Free software is worth paying for.

To be alerted when the release of this open source / free software ticketing system is available, contact Benjamin Melançon or sign up at this site.

• OBOE Vision and Scope Document (Original)
• OBOE Business Requirements Gathering Document (Original, for community arts center)

The intention then, even more explicitly than now, was for OBOE’s ticketing and event management components to form a base for full-featured community-engagement web-based software with artist and performer management, volunteer self-management, donor tracking and on-line giving, and more.