CiviCRM History and Background

[scedwar]

(from another thread)

We don't have a "history" page - I guess we need a historian :-). The closest to it would be our 2006 Year-end Report linked from here:
http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Home

The project was started by Donald Lobo and myself ~3 years ago, after working together at Groundspring.org - and realizing that there was a need for an open-source solution in the NPO/NGO/eAdvocacy space.

I'd love to see a page explaining some background to CiviCRM. This is an amazing system and I'd love to know how it got off the ground and how it continues to develop. I'm sure there must be many projects wondering how CiviCRM has come to be so polished and supported.

You don't even have a wikipedia page!
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=CiviCRM&action=edit

Thanks for all your efforts - I'm sure a lot of people are very grateful for CiviCRM.

Stephen

[geilhufe]

Put up a very basic page with some of the history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CiviCRM

[Dave Greenberg]

David - thx for doing this. Unfortunately I just took an peek and the page is "marked for speedy deletion" because "it is an article about a company or corporation that does not assert the importance or significance of the subject."

One of the reasons I hadn't created an entry previously is not being clear about how to make it not "self-promotional" and hence not acceptable.

I'm thinking we need some of our users to pipe in and "explain" why there should be a CiviCRM page and perhaps flesh it out a bit from the community perspective.

[geilhufe]

Oops. I'll just put it on a wiki page...

[geilhufe]

We've been deleted 3 separate times from Wikipedia over the last 10 months. Interesting. If anyone in the community wants to champion getting a CiviCRM page up, feel free.

[scedwar]

This page references a CiviCRM page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CivicSpace

I really don't understand the logic of deleting the CiviCRM page.

[hallman]

There's some info at http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/FAQ#FAQ-general
Particularly "How has CiviCRM evolved and grown?" -- http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC/How+Evolved

David Geilhufe, How about posting what you have in the CiviCRM FAQ while someone familiar with how to get it into Wikipedia works on that part. You could put it in as a replacement for How+Evolved and call it History, which makes more sense.

Judy Hallman

[Denver Dave]

Many people may be interested in the CiviCRM business model.  I've certainly never seen an open source application like CiviCRM with the sophistication, documentation and discussion forums.   I don't see a donate button anyplace.

Why is CiviCRM so different in its level of sophistication?

[brizone]

Any development on this topic?  Anyone working this actively?  I'd like to help...

[Donald Lobo]

there is a very large contribute program which drives development of the project:

check

http://civicrm.org/mih

contribute now!, contribute often

lobo

[JoeMurray]

BTW, was some of the early source for CiviMail or CiviContribute brought over from Groundspring, or just ideas?

[reperry]

I'm also interested in the answer to Joe's question!

[Donald Lobo]

The early source for CiviMail or CiviContribute was not brought over from groundspring.

However we used the same LAMP stack at groundspring and also the same set of pear packages (smarty, quickform et al)

lobo

[Lisa Jervis]

I'm also interested in info on how decisions get made. Are there any docs about that? (I'm taking a class on open collaboration and peer production, and as part of that I am contributing to Civi documentation and also doing some research and reporting to the class about my participation). I've looked for more year-end reports, looked on the developer wiki, and searched the forums.  Any info would be much appreciated!


-Lisa