Christian Software

They'll sell more of the game software than "Christian" software.

Also, much of the serious study software includes reference works and the software manufacturer has to pay royalties to the publishers/authors of the reference works to include them in electronic form. My older printer copy of my Brown, Driver and Briggs cost me $55, my Hebrew text was about $35, my Greek language aids are another $120 or so... You can see how it adds up.

 

It's a limited market and the people who do the work deserve to be compensated for their effort. Their children deserve to eat and they deserve to be able to work only one exhausting job.

 

I'm a programmer, and I've been kicking around the idea of a similar app for a while now, to help out smaller churches. Your plans sound great, but the only drawback is that it sounds like to use the software you are creating, they need to have Access, Word and Excel. If they don't have those, the price of those three things are higher than buying a pro church management software package in the first place. I could probably whip something up in a few weeks that does most of what you describe, without the user needing other software. Let me know if you want some help, etc.

Brian

 

This is a great topic! About a year ago I though of doing this. I would like to echo the idea about avioding microsoft access & commercial products in general.

What I would like to suggest is usinging open office (www.openoffice.org). It is free and runs on several differant platforms (mac, windows, linux & bsd). If propietary software is kept out of the software then I am pretty sure that I could come up with some resources and people who would be willing to work on this project. If anyone is interested in this maybe we could start an official project.

I have dealt with some of the expensive church management packages, and they leave alot to be desired. I am confident that a group of determined people with a common goal could make something that would exceed expectations and help people & churchs to be better stewards.

Jason

 

As of right now open office doesn't have a built-in database. It looks like they are planning to use MySQL when it reaches version 4. The only thing that I have found is a paper on using mysql through a JDBC driver.

If MySQL was used, it could have a web interface as well as or in place of a traditional gui interface. I am a php programmer so I like web interfaces that use mysql.

I have a few questions about using access for a begining phase. It may allow us get a prototype up and running. Any additional ideas anyone?

I could offer the use of my FreeBSD server if it would help.

 

Hi All,

I've used QuickVerse Membership Plus 6, but it cost $200.00. Are you thinking about doing an app that would be freely distributed for anyone to use? OpenSource maybe?

I'm a C/C++ programmer by trade, embedded industrial communications code mostly, but can write VC++ and VB apps.

I'd be willing to throw in my lot will y'all.
I'll be away from home over the holidays but can start after the 1st.

 

I am also a C/C++ programmer by trade. And for fun, I do more C/C++ in my spare time.

I'd be interested in helping out where I could, but I'm stretched a little thin right now. I could spare a few hours a week, I guess. I'm content to let others scope out the requirements, choose the implementation, etc. OpenOffice looks like a possibility. We could even write something from scratch.

 

why not create it as a web application?

that way there would be no need for the client to have anything installed to make it work (aside from a browser) - you would just need a server to put the application on - you would also avoid the headache of client support.

You could junk all the opening up of word and excel and open them up as formatted pages in a browser with the option to download to those packages or as formatted text.

The application development would also be 100x quicker. You could also run the backend on mysql with php scripting on linux - so there would be no cost aside from the web server and bandwidth which you could charge a minimal annual fee for.

 

Okay. It sounds like we may have ourselves a project.

What are some features that we want?
</font>

• Track Visitors</font>
• Track Members</font>
• backup (that works)</font>
• Sunday School tracking</font>
• Visitaion listing/tracking</font>

Also, can we all agree on using the GPL for the software license?
As for gui or web based, what are some ideas?

Jason

 

I suggest that if we do use a web interface, then we do it in a way that doesn't require internet access. There are several packages out there that install php/apache/mysql for any version of microsoft windows. This would keep the requirements down to having a working computer. Internet access would not be an issue.

 

New info...

Check out "InfoCentral", an open source church membership information web-based app.

You can find it HERE

 

ack - that is going to add the same client support overhead as a client application would - IMO we should focus on building a web app and assume that if a church is sufficently techno-literate to want a system like this they will, at least, have an internet connection.

I suppose I am saying that we need to define exactly what type of market we are catering for - because any sort of application is going to have to be built around a basic minimum standard - what are those going to be? - then we can define the technology that we want to use.

I suggest that we build for windows 98 + with an internet connection - although if we did it as a client app we could build for win98 + with some flavour of office....

I prefer the web approach because:

a) it is less of an overhead to upgrade/bug fix
b) it is thin client and we avoid the 'why doesn't this work on my pc' issues that always crop up
c) it is much more extensible than a traditional client side application

also we should have a think about the likely demand for the product that we build, average ability of our average user etc - if we need to charge for it (and we will) what would be the maximum that we should charge? assuming that everyone here gives their time for free what are the basic costs?

btw - I would prefer to write this in ASP, and I have some server space going very cheap to host - this approach would, obviously, be different from the linux/php/mysql route (it would be nt/asp/access but I think it will deliver a better result (but i am biased )

this is fun!