Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Community Websites

[Sean Davey (seandavey]

Hi Sheila,

thank you for giving me the opportunity to address your concern. Mosaic is not 
proprietary in the usual meaning of the word. I will be making the source code 
available although my initial focus is on getting interested communities up and 
running as quickly as possible. I'll also be working with communities who want 
to run Mosaic on their own servers.

One thing that I'm curious to learn more about it how different communities 
feel about privacy. Some may be happy using an online service such as Google 
Groups or my hosting of Mosaic while others may be interested in hosting their 
information themselves. Some may want to do all the technical work themselves 
while others may prefer the convenience of having someone else setup and host 
their site. Knowing cohousing, each community will probably be in a unique 
place on the spectrum :-)

Drupal and WordPress are very good at what they do and if they meet your 
community's needs, that's great. I'm excited at the prospect of any software 
that is helpful to communities.

best,
  sean

> Sean, your offer is most generous.  Those are extensive features and the
> Sonora site looks wonderful. I'm a graphic designer myself and while I work
> a lot in WordPress someone else in our forming group is a Drupal expert. So
> our site is setup with similar features to yours, using the Drupal
> OpenSource platform (I designed the logo and site). We're a newly forming
> group: www.capitolhillurbancohousing.org. 
> 
> I looked at your link and read about Mosaic. I am unfamiliar with it. For me
> it raises a bit of a concern as it looks proprietary (meaning custom and
> unique to you). Please correct me if I'm wrong. I just feel that it's best
> for communities to work with tools that are in wide use so that they do not
> become dependant on any sole provider. I know that both WordPress and Drupal
> are such trusted platforms that in very wide use.
> 
> To that end I offer another resource for communities in need. I've come
> across this site in my web travels. They offer very low cost sites based in
> Drupal. Here's their link: http://community-website.org/ I am in no way
> affiliated.
> 
> Happy New Year.
> Sheila