Customizing and extending

Early 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, in order to make sure this software suits the needs of your organization. Then, you can share with the community so that you benefit from their efforts to improve, document, support, and extend the software. That is the true value of open source. Unlike proprietary closed-source software, you're not wholly dependent on the roadmap plans of the company who owns the software (crossing your fingers in the hope they build your desired functionality), nor are you required to work through their support...