Chapter 14. Customization, Community, and Cooperation

In this closing chapter, we want to tie up some loose ends and point you forward in your implementation of CiviCRM. We will cover the following topics:

• Future versions and the project roadmap

• Customizing and extending

• Community and cooperation

• Getting support and assistance

• Supporting the project

Future versions and the project roadmap

At the time of writing version 4.7 is the current stable release and 4.6 (which we used for this book) is the Long Time Support (LTS) version. On average, CiviCRM releases two major releases a year, along with numerous minor revisions to deal with bug fixes. In general, the CiviCRM development cycle typically follows the open source mantra of release early, release often. There is also continuing discussion on the road forward; the latest vision is to first release new functionality as extensions.

The core team relies heavily on the CiviCRM blog to provide information to the community. Continue to watch the blog for more information.

Customizing and extending

Earlier in this book, we presented CiviCRM's open source licensing as one of the chief selling points of the software. Open source means the source code is readily available and can be altered or added to without infringing on the license. In short, it means you can open up the hood and tinker with it to your heart's content.

Of course, tinkering isn't really what benefits you. It's the ability to truly customize, expand, add on, restructure, or do whatever you need to make sure that this software suits the needs of your organization. Then you can share with the community so that they can benefit from your efforts to improve, document, support, and extend the software—and in turn, you can benefit from what other's share. This is the true value of open source. Unlike proprietary closed source software, you're not wholly dependent on the roadmap plans of the company that owns the software (crossing your fingers in hope that they build your desired functionality), nor...

Community and cooperation

As alluded to in the last section, CiviCRM is as much about a community of developers, integrators, implementers, administrators, and end users, as it is an off-the-shelf piece of software. The reason CiviCRM can be offered for free and has such a robust history of new features and new versions is because organizations and developers have supported it financially and through active code contributions.

Whether you intended to or not, when you began using CiviCRM you became part of that community. The more you get engaged in that community, the more opportunities you will have to grow, learn from, and contribute to the community. There are several ways to get more involved.

A growing way to learn about and share experiences with CiviCRM is local meet-ups. These relatively informal events generally include demonstrations of how people in an area are using CiviCRM, perhaps some technical discussion, and a chance to chat and ask questions. So far, there have been meet...

Supporting CiviCRM

We've already described a number of ways you can support CiviCRM—by contributing code, reporting issues, discussing and answering questions through StackExchange and the forums, and attending events—but you can also support CiviCRM more directly, through financial contributions. While CiviCRM is free to download and install, it is not free to develop and maintain. The health and future of the software depends on organizations demonstrating their commitment through financial support.

There are several ways you can show support financially:

• Becoming a member (https://civicrm.org/become-a-member): Membership is the first step in demonstrating support. It is an affordable way to recognize the benefit of CiviCRM to your organization and help contribute to its sustainability.

• Becoming a partner (https://civicrm.org/become-a-partner): Partnership elevates your level of commitment to the next level. Partners value the significance of CiviCRM to their organization or business and...

Summary

In this closing chapter, we looked at the upcoming versions of CiviCRM and the overall roadmap, and briefly reviewed key considerations when customizing your installation. We walked through the basics of code development and outlined why and how you can participate in the growing CiviCRM community. We also learned how you can cooperate to advance the project.